[Amstrad Chief Engineer] Bob Watkins and I flew off to Japan and had our usual trip around Akihabara before visiting Hawson in Taiwan. Bob referred to me as Hawk-eyes because he didn’t know how I managed to observe every single detail of something I’d spotted in Akihabara. In one of the stores selling up-market equipment used for professional recording, I noticed in the corner an industrial unit made by Sharp with a twin cassette deck for copying tapes.

Bingo! Something sparked off in my mind. On the plane from Tokyo to Taipei, Bob and I sketched up a tower system with a double cassette deck mechanism. One of the cassette mechanisms would be play-only, while the other would be the normal play-and-record type, the idea being that consumers could dub their own tapes.

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I think it’s fair to say that we set the template because in the years that followed, every single audio manufacturer in the world – including the Japanese and European giants – produced twin cassette audio units as staples. Our head start meant that we had a good eighteen-month to two-year run at it.

[After launching the feature on our TS35 Tower System], we went on to develop the twin cassette concept on to portable radio cassettes – nobody had ever done that before either. It was a massive hit and once again became the industry standard.