Dutch engineer Lou Ottens, recognized worldwide for creating the cassette, passed away at 94 years for causes that were not reported.

Ottens, who managed in the late '70s to create a format that stood out for its practicality, died on Saturday but the news came out in the last hours.

The engineer worked together with a group of researchers from the Phillips company, with whom he achieved renown when in 1964, gave life to the cassette that, just a year later, began to be marketed in Europe and, in 1969, landed in the United States.

The creation had a quality leap when in 1971 a variant was made that reduced noise with a chrome dioxide tape and became a popular item when in 1974 the Japanese company Maxell launched the cassettes with virgin tape.

The ability to copy albums, putting together your own compilation or recording your own voice with the brand new home recorders was the great attraction that this format offered, which also stood out for its portable size.

Precisely, the appearance of the walkman, in the late '70s, further propped up this format, that began to lose steam when it made its breakthrough in the market, in the second half of the '80s, the compact disc.

Ottens, who from a very young age had shown his skills in the field with the construction of a radio that allowed him to listen to stations during World War II, he was also involved in the development of the compact disc.