Lou Ottens facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lou Ottens
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Ottens in 2007 during an interview for the magazine of the Dutch Royal Institute of Engineers (Nederlands Koninklijk Instituut van Ingenieurs)
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Lodewijk Frederik Ottens
21 June 1926 Bellingwolde, Netherlands
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| Died | 6 March 2021 (aged 94) Duizel, Netherlands
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| Nationality | Dutch |
| Occupation | Engineer |
Lodewijk Frederik Ottens (born June 21, 1926 – died March 6, 2021) was a Dutch engineer and inventor. He is most famous for inventing the cassette tape. He also helped a lot in developing the compact disc. Ottens worked for Philips his whole career.
Early Life and Learning
Lou Ottens was born in Bellingwolde, Netherlands, on June 21, 1926. From a young age, he loved technology and building things.
Building a Secret Radio
When he was a teenager, during World War II, the Germans occupied the Netherlands. Ottens built a radio to secretly listen to Radio Oranje broadcasts. These broadcasts were from the Dutch government that was not in the Netherlands. To avoid being caught by German jammers, Ottens made his radio with a special antenna.
University Studies
After the war, Ottens went to the Delft University of Technology. He studied mechanical engineering. While at university, he worked part-time drawing plans for machines at an X-ray technology factory. He finished his studies in 1952.
Career at Philips
In 1952, Ottens started working at Philips. He began in a department that focused on making things work automatically in Eindhoven. In 1957, he moved to a new Philips factory in Hasselt, Belgium. This factory mainly made audio equipment. This included turntables (record players), tape recorders, and loudspeakers.
Leading Product Development (1960–1969)
In 1960, Ottens became the head of the new product development team in Hasselt. He led the creation of Philips' first portable tape recorder, called the EL 3585. This product was very popular. Over 1 million of them were sold!
Inventing the Compact Cassette
After the success of the EL 3585, Philips Hasselt wanted to make an even smaller, portable cassette recorder. Their goal was to create a "pocket recorder" that was cheap and small. It also needed to use little battery power but still have good sound.
Philips first thought about using a cassette system from another company, RCA. But Ottens found it was too big for what they wanted. So, Philips decided to create their own cassette. Ottens started the design by cutting a block of wood. This wood block was the size he wanted the new cassette recorder to be, so it could fit in his jacket pocket. This became the model for the first portable cassette recorder, the EL 3300.
Ottens led a team of about ten or twelve people. They had experience designing record players and tape recorders. They worked hard to develop the cassette and its equipment.
In 1963, Philips showed the cassette system to the public at a big event in Berlin. At first, not many people in the audio world were very interested. However, some photos were taken. These photos were later used by Japanese companies to make copies of Ottens' system. These copies were bigger than the original.
A civil engineer on Ottens' team, Wilhelmus F.A. Heylands, later explained why Philips' Compact Cassette became so successful. Philips decided to offer the patent for this invention for free to other companies. This meant other manufacturers, like National and Sony, could make their own cassette players without paying Philips. Because of this, the Compact Cassette became a worldwide standard.
Director of Philips Hasselt (1969–1972)
In 1969, Ottens became the Director of Philips Hasselt. Under his leadership, the Hasselt factory focused mainly on making Philips cassette systems. The popularity of compact cassettes was growing fast. As more and more people wanted compact cassettes, Philips Hasselt grew. It ended up having over 5000 employees!
Director of Philips Audio (1972–1979)
In 1972, Ottens became the technical director of Philips' main audio division. He realized that new laser technology, being studied for video records, could also make audio better. With lasers, there would be no more wear and tear on records or tapes. This was a common problem with old vinyl records.
Developing the Compact Disc
The new audio project, called Audio Long Play (ALP), needed big changes from the video version. The video discs were very large, like old LP records. They could hold 48 hours of music. But Ottens thought this was too much and not practical.
In 1972, he asked his team to test smaller discs. They first tried discs that were about 17.8 centimeters (7 inches) wide. When those worked well, they made them even smaller, to 11.5 centimeters (4.5 inches). This size was chosen so the discs would fit in car radio systems that already existed.
The laser for the ALP also needed to be smaller. Philips' research lab developed a new, smaller laser. However, after years of testing, Ottens and his team found that old-style analog technology would create too much background noise. It would not be better than gramophone records. So, they decided to start developing new digital technology instead.
Philips' audio division did not have enough experts in digital technology. So, Ottens put together a team of seven technicians who knew about digital systems. In 1977, this team made the first test model of the digital disc. Ottens was very excited. He created a special lab just for this project, called the Compact Disc Development lab.
The first complete model was ready by March 1979. It was shown to over 300 journalists at a press conference in Eindhoven.
Right after the conference, Ottens and his project lead, Joop Sinjou, went to Japan. They wanted to get support for the compact disc and make it a worldwide standard. There, they made an agreement with Sony. Sony was also working on digital and optical recording. The two companies agreed to work together and set a single, universal standard for the compact disc.
Director of Philips Video (1979–1984)
After his trip to Japan, Ottens became the technical director of Philips' main video division. This division was much larger than the audio one. It was a big player in the TV business at that time.
The Video 2000 System
In his first year in this role, the video division started to develop a new video cassette system called the Video 2000. This was meant to replace the VCR. Philips developed it with another company called Grundig. Each company released its own version of this recorder. Ottens was in charge of the Philips version.
The Video 2000 faced many technical problems soon after it was released. Many devices were returned for repair within a few months. Also, the cost to make the Philips system was quite high compared to similar systems.
Under Ottens' guidance, a second version of the system was made. This new system was more reliable. It was also smaller and lighter. It also started and stopped faster. By 1984, the Video 2000 had reliable stereo sound.
Also in 1984, Ottens' factory started making VHS machines. These machines were very similar to the Video 2000. These VHS machines eventually replaced the Video 2000. The Video 2000 did not become popular and was officially stopped in 1985.
Later Years
After he retired, Lou Ottens stayed involved in technology for many years. He became the chairman of the Dutch Association for Logistics Management in 1988. Ottens was interviewed for a 2016 documentary film called Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape. He also attended the film's first showing in London.
Lou Ottens passed away in Duizel, Netherlands, on March 6, 2021, at the age of 94.
See also
In Spanish: Lou Ottens para niños
