Lou Ottens - Usually Credited as Inventor of the Cassette Tape

Lodewijk Frederik Ottens: June 21, 1926 to March 6, 2021. Lou Ottens Led Team That Invented the Cassette Tape - WSJ

The first bit of true High Fidelity audio equipment most folks of certain generation purchased, after a decent turntable, was a cassette tape deck.

It also was the first bit of equipment that allowed you to take your own music with you in your car, and then of course there was The Sony Walkman...

It's difficult to overstate the importance of cassette tapes to music culture. We wouldn't have mixtapes and playlists without them. What's more, they allowed people to listen to their favorite songs and albums on the go. No ads or input from a radio DJ. That's something that has come to define how people enjoy music ever since.

Lou Ottens didn't consider himself the inventor of the Cassette Tape, only the leader of the team.

“I can take credit for the idea and a number of ideas in it,” he said, but designers and engineers on his team made it work. “I have done nothing special,” Mr. Ottens said.

The idea came to him, he said, one night after he struggled to thread tape through a bulky reel-to-reel player. A colleague quipped that the cassette was inspired by “the clumsiness of a very clever man.”

Given that there is another Guardians of the Galaxy film in the works, I think it is fair to say that the humble cassette tape has had an enduring impact on the culture.

Mr Ottens also worked on the development of the Compact Disc, which was the next revolution in way music was listened to.