History (1996): Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT)

This article was published by the Museum of Obsolete Media.

Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) (1996 – 2010)

Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT) was introduced by Sony in 1996, and was a magnetic tape format for data storage.

AIT uses a cassette with 8mm tape similar to Sony’s Video8, and uses helical scan technology and a memory chip that keeps relevant information about the tape.

Five generations of AIT were released, and unlike other tape data formats, each was backwards and forwards compatible with multiple generations.

AIT-1 was released in 1996 with a capacity of 20GB, and AIT-5 was released in 2007 with a capacity of 400GB.

It was discontinued in 2010.