30/10/2024
THE STORY OF THE CASSETTE: LOU OTTENS AND HIS INVENTION THAT MADE MUSIC TRAVEL
Since its creation in 1963, it became a revolutionary object for the world. Its reign lasted until the arrival of the CD in the 80s.
In 1963, Lou Ottens created a small plastic box, 10 centimeters by 6, that would change the world forever. As the head of engineers at the Dutch company Hasselt, owned by Philips, he was in charge of developing a prototype to store and play music that, ten years later, became popular worldwide under the name of cassette.
Ottens was obsessed with the idea of creating compact technology to play music. At that time, songs were played on vinyl records, which were too large and fragile to adapt to the growing mobility of people. Music was always a static pleasure, but this prototype promised to bring movement to it.
Cassette means "small box" in French and refers to the container that holds two small reels connected by a magnetic tape. Music is recorded on that tape and can be played on both sides, requiring listeners to take the cassette out of the player to flip it over and offer the machine the now-famous Side A and Side B.
By 1964, cassettes were already being sold in Europe, and four years later, they landed in the United States. It was a new and still rudimentary object, but it quickly attracted enthusiasts eager to turn it into an indispensable ally for music.
In 1971, noise reduction was improved through the use of chromium dioxide tape. The sound quality improved significantly, but true popularity came with a Japanese technology that turned listeners into active participants.
The Japanese company Maxell released blank tapes, which unleashed creativity. Users could now record their own music: copy entire albums, create their own compilations, and even record their own voices with home recorders. The cassette opened up a world of possibilities, where the listener was in control.
Throughout the 70s and 80s, cassettes ruled the music world. Unlike vinyl records, they were sturdy and compact. They could be carried in backpacks and pockets, shared easily, and withstood all the challenges of travel. Additionally, they could be customized to the user's taste, creating personalized mixtapes that were the pioneers of today’s playlists.
With their proven popularity, various companies worked to improve Ottens' invention. The American company Dolby worked on noise reduction, and in 1978, pure metal particle tapes were created, an advancement that preserved sound quality for decades without alterations.
Just one year later, another technological breakthrough linked to the cassette revolutionized the way people listened to music. On July 1, 1979, the Walkman was born: a portable, battery-powered player that introduced a habit still present today—listening to music while walking, in public transportation, or in a waiting room, all individually through the use of headphones.
In the 1980s, cassettes were omnipresent in car stereos, Walkmans, and home recorders. Blank versions flourished, allowing the creation of compilations or "mix tapes," and they flooded record store windows with the latest releases from the most popular artists.
However, it was Lou Ottens himself who participated in the creation of the cassette's successor: the compact disc or CD, a new technology that gradually gained traction with consumers and eventually dethroned the cassette as the new king of sound reproduction.
In 1981, Sony and Philips launched CDs to the market. Discs made from polycarbonate and coated with aluminum, making the small cassette box from the 70s seem large by comparison. Weighing only 30 grams, they could store up to 650 megabytes, making them first dominant in the world of music and later in the realm of computing.
CDs slowly but surely gained dominance among users. Until the 1990s, compact discs and cassettes coexisted in record stores, and many still preferred the Walkman, even when more modern technologies like the Discman were available. However, the fidelity of sound and practicality of the CD eventually triumphed. By 2007, 200 billion discs had been sold worldwide.
Even after being dethroned from the realm of musical reproduction, the mark cassettes left on the music world was so significant that these little boxes are still fondly remembered by the nostalgic. They were perhaps the first to allow listeners to truly take ownership of music and set it in eternal motion. Credits: Abundancia y Prosperidad
