In praise of Lou Ottens

Lou Ottens has died, at the age of 94.

Lou who, you say?

Lou, the Dutch engineer who, whilst working for Philips in the 1960s, invented the compact cassette tape. Since then, over 100 billion tapes have been sold globally, a fact that may have surprised both Ottens and Philips, since his invention was originally designed for dictation machines. But there were three factors contributing to its success: firstly, collaboration with Sony meant that it could be established as a worldwide standard, rather than having to compete with rival formats (remember how the techincally inferior VHS lost a format war to Betamax?); secondly, and crucially, improvements in fidelity meant it could be used for music, rather than just dictation; and thirdly, the Walkman eventually came along, making it the must-have mobile format.

And then, of course, there were mixtapes. I was going to write a paean to the humble cassette in general, and mixtapes in particular, but then remembered I had already done so, back in the very early days of this blog (2005). It already seems a quaint piece, with talk of burning CDs instead of making a mixtape... when's the last time you burnt a CD? Anyway, you can read the original post here but here's a snippet of what I wrote back then.

Because of the time and effort that went into making a really good compilation tape, giving someone a mix meant something. Making a tape for a friend meant "these are songs that I like - you might like them too because we're mates". Making a tape for a girl meant "I want you to think I'm cool" or "I want to seduce you with music"... or, most often, "look how obvious I'm trying to make it that I like you". And what pleasure could be gained from making a tape for yourself! Sometimes, with careful planning and a stroke of luck, the perfect compilation would emerge, and do sterling service on the car stereo for the next six months.

I still have a number of compilation tapes knocking about. I even keep one particularly good mix in the car "for emergencies", i.e. when I'm sick to death of the CDs in the autochanger. Others are gifts from people that mean so much. I'll never play them again because they're becoming so frail, but I'll never get rid of them. The sight of them with their hand-decorated inlay cards is enough for me to remember the thought that went into them, the emotional investment that was made. But I do recognise them for what they are: relics of a bygone age, the 20th Century. Nowadays the whole product can be done and dusted in minutes, digital inlay artwork included - some homespun discs could even be passed off as commercial products, which makes me a bit sad. I can't argue with the fact that technology has made compilations easier to make and more professional in quality but there's just no fun in it anymore. No more will I spend a blissful weekend planning and recording a perfect C90 and never again will I be able to give someone a compilation that says "this is how much you mean to me".

And because no post these days seems complete without some embeddable content, here's a montage of Rob from High Fidelity, talking about mixtape rules. Thanks, Mr Ottens, and RIP.