Forever pressing play with Lou Ottens’ invention, the cassette tape

For radio loyalists, vintage music collectors, and historians, the passing of Lou Ottens was a sobering moment.

Hyderabad-based Bass artiste, DJ and RJ Bala Subramanyam, better known as Dakta Dub, says he was taken aback by how truly upset he was when he heard the news of Ottens’ death on March 6. Many are especially intrigued by the history of Ottens love for audio. The Dutch inventor indulged a curiosity in experimenting with radios when he was a teenager, even going so far as to build one himself from scratch so that he and his parents could tune into the Radio Oranje in the Netherlands in the late 1930s. He modified the radio with a directional antenna to avoid Nazi German radio jammers.