Ottens started working for Philips as a recent engineer in 1952. Eight years later, he became head of product development. In a year, he and his team introduced the first portable tape recorder, which sold over a million units.
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Philips introduced the first audio cassette with the slogan “smaller than a box of cigarettes” at the electronics fair in 1963. Ottens succeeded in concluding an agreement with the Japanese company Sony, which used a mechanism patented by Philips and its cassettes sold worldwide became standard. Audio cassettes have sold over one hundred billion.
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Ottens later participated in the development of CDs, which were also put into general use by a pair of companies Philips and Sony. More than 200 billion of these carriers have been sold.
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What he said most was regretting that Sony was the first to invent the walkman, which he considered the ideal use of the cassette, and not his home Philips. Regarding the recent resurgence of interest in audio cassettes, Ottens skeptically remarked that “audio CDs can’t beat anything.”
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