Preserving fragile cylinder recordings
The first recordings were made wax or plastic cylinders. The bulky technology, which was around from about the mid 1880's to about 1915, lost out to gramophone discs.
But now, you can play lots of cylinder recordings on your iPod. The University of California - Santa Barbara has digitized about 6,000 cylinders, which range from Vaudeville sketches to early jazz to the day's popular songs.