Lou Ottens, the Dutch inventor of the cassette tape, died on March 6 at age 94, Philips said.
A structural engineer who trained at the prestigious Technical University in Delft, the Netherlands, he joined Philips in 1952 and was head of the Dutch company’s product development department when he began work on an alternative for existing tape recorders with their cumbersome large spools of tape.
His goal was simple — make tapes and their players far more portable and easier to use.
Photo: AP 照片：美聯社
“During the development of the cassette tape, in the early 1960s, he had a wooden block made that fit exactly in his coat pocket,” said Olga Coolen, director of the Philips Museum in the southern Netherlands city of Eindhoven. “This was how big the first compact cassette was to be, making it a lot handier than the bulky tape recorders in use at the time.” The final product created in 1962 later turned into a worldwide hit, with more than 100 billion cassettes sold, many to music fans who would record their own compilations direct from the radio. Its popularity waned with the development of the compact disc, an invention Ottens also helped create as supervisor of a development team, Philips said.
The cassette tape’s success stemmed from its simplicity, Ottens said in an interview published by the Philips Museum.
“It was a breakthrough because it was foolproof,” he said, adding that players and recorders could also run on batteries, making them very user-friendly and, ultimately, portable.
(AP)
飛利浦公司表示，卡式磁帶發明人、荷蘭籍的路‧歐騰斯，已於三月六日辭世，享壽九十四歲。
歐騰斯為一名結構工程師，出身著名的荷蘭台夫特理工大學，於一九五二年進入荷蘭飛利浦公司。他在飛利浦擔任產品開發部門主管時，開始研發一種新產品，以代替當時使用大而笨重磁帶捲的錄音機。
他的目標很簡單，那就是把磁帶及其播放器變得更輕巧、更容易使用。
飛利浦博物館館長歐哈‧庫倫表示，「一九六○年代初，在他開發卡式磁帶期間，他做了一個木塊，大小正好可以放進他的大衣口袋」。飛利浦博物館位於荷蘭南部城市安荷芬。「這就是第一個小型卡帶的大小，比當時所使用的笨重錄音機要靈巧得多」。卡式錄音帶於一九六二年開發完成，後來風靡全球，售出逾一千億個，其中許多是賣給樂迷，讓他們可以從收音機直接把音樂錄下來，自製成合輯。飛利浦表示，隨著CD的發展，錄音帶便沒落了。歐騰斯亦為發明CD的開發團隊主管。
歐騰斯在飛利浦博物館一次採訪中說，卡式磁帶的成功在於其簡單性。
他表示：「因為它防呆，所以這是個突破」，並補充道，播放器和錄音機也可以用電池供電，這就讓它非常人性化，終究也讓它便於攜帶。
（台北時報林俐凱編譯）
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