The problem of copying recordings got better with the invention of the gramophone (also called the "phonograph" in American English) around 1888. The gramophone works in much the same way as the phonograph, but instead of a cylinder, the needle's grooves are etched into a disk record which turns on a spinning table. Because the record media was flat, copying recordings was much simpler. Pressing the original recording onto a plate of shellac created a negative master, where the grooves were bumps on the surface instead of being scratched into the surface. The master could be used to produce many copies through the opposite process.