Dutch news media
Otense’s achievement was to create a compact cassette tape, a physical storage device. In the early 1960s, discussions on a storage device to replace the LP version were active. Among them, Philips succeeded in standardizing the storage device of the’open reel’ method.
Otense led a project to create a prototype of wood enough to fit in his pocket. He also persuaded Philips to make his invention available to other manufacturers for free, and later helped Sony and Philips create a cassette together.
Cassette tape has established itself as a representative recording medium in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to the’Walkman’ produced by Sony along with efforts to improve the magnetic material of the tape. Anyone in the 60’s and 80’s generation will have had the experience of listening to music on cassette tapes at least once, and it survived until the early 2000s.
Since then, Philips made a digital compact cassette (DCC), a digital version of a cassette tape that can cover the disadvantages of portable cassettes (reel damage, Walkman device belt damage, etc.), but failed to gain marketability.
Otense died at the age of 94 in the Dutch city of’Duizel’, and the exact cause of death is unknown.
