In 1963, Lou Ottens created a small plastic box, 10 centimeters by 6, that would change the music world forever. As the head of engineering at the Dutch company Hasselt, owned by Philips, he was in charge of developing a prototype to store and play music, which ten years later became popular worldwide under the name “cassette.”
Ottens was obsessed with the possibility of creating a compact technology for playing music. At that time, songs were played on vinyl records, which were too large and fragile to adapt to the movement of the population. Sounds were always a static pleasure, but this prototype promised to give music another kind of movement.
Cassette means “little box” in French, referring 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 remove the cassette from the player to offer the device the 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 had an increasing number of enthusiasts ready to turn it into an indispensable ally for music.
In 1971, noise reduction was improved with the use of chromium dioxide tape. Sounds traveled better and better on board that little plastic box, but true popularity came hand in hand with Japanese technology, which turned listeners into protagonists.
The Japanese company Maxell launched blank tapes on the market, cassettes that unleashed creativity. Users could now record their own music: copy entire albums, create their own compilations, and even record their own voices using home recorders. The cassette offered a world of possibilities where the listener was in control.
During the 1970s and 1980s, cassettes dominated the music world. Unlike vinyl records, they were sturdy and compact. They could travel in backpacks and pockets, be shared, and withstand the challenges of every journey. They could also be tailored to the user’s preferences, who created, in the form of a mixed cassette, the forerunners 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 without deterioration for decades.
Just a year later, another technological breakthrough associated with 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, on public transportation, or in a waiting room, all individually, thanks to the use of headphones.
In the 1980s, cassettes dominated car stereos, Walkmans, and home recorders. In their blank versions, they were used to create compilations or “mix tapes,” and flooded record store windows with the latest releases from the most renowned artists.
But 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 won over consumers and eventually became the new king of sound reproduction.
In 1981, Sony and Philips launched CDs on the market. These discs, made of polycarbonate and coated with aluminum, made the small cassette box of the 1970s seem large. Weighing just 30 grams, they could store up to 650 megabytes, first dominating the music world and later making their mark in the realm of computing.
CDs gradually gained popularity among users. Throughout 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 sound fidelity and practicality of the CD eventually won out completely. By 2007, 200 billion discs had been sold worldwide.
Even after being dethroned as the king of music playback, the mark that cassettes left on the music world was so significant that these small boxes are still remembered fondly by the nostalgic. Perhaps because they were the first to truly allow listeners to take ownership of music and set it in eternal motion.