Phonograph "gramophones" or "talking-machines". His "gramophone record" was the first disc record to be offered to the public. They were five inches (12.7 cm) in diameter and recorded on one side only. Seven-inch (17.5 cm) records followed in 1895. Also in 1895 Berliner replaced the hard rubber used to make the discs with a shellac compound. Berliner's early records had poor sound quality, however. Work by Eldridge R. Johnson improved the sound fidelity to a point where it was as good as the cylinder. By 1901, ten-inch (25 cm) records were marketed by Johnson and Berliner's Victor Talking Machine Company, and
Berliner Gramophone competing small-diameter brown wax cylinder records were recorded at about 120 rpm and could play for as long as three minutes, although recordings fully that long were uncommon. At the end of the decade, cylinder record makers began a transition to higher speeds, mainly to produce louder-playing cylinders that could better compete with the considerably louder gramophone – cylinders had usually been heard through individual stethoscope-like listening tubes rather than through a horn that yielded relatively feeble sound. A new standard cylinder speed of 160 rpm was soon established, reducing the maximum playing time to a little over two minutes