Phonograph record Gramophone trademark, Berliner started marketing records of 7 inches diameter with somewhat more substantial entertainment value, along with somewhat more substantial gramophones to play them. Berliner's records had poor sound quality compared to wax cylinders, but his manufacturing associate Eldridge R. Johnson eventually improved it. Abandoning Berliner's "Gramophone" trademark for legal reasons, in 1901 Johnson's and Berliner's separate companies reorganized to form the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey, whose products would come to dominate the market for many years. Emile Berliner moved his company to Montreal in 1900. The factory, which became the Canadian branch of RCA
Gramophone Company make records himself, and won, in spite of the negative verdict against Berliner. This victory by Johnson, which was used in naming the new record company the Victor Talking Machine Company he founded the following year, may have been in part due to a patent-pooling handshake agreement with Columbia. The agreement allowed Columbia to produce disc records themselves, which they began doing in 1901; Columbia's records had previously been cylinders. The Victor Talking Machine Company was never a branch or subsidiary of Gramophone, as Johnson's manufactory, which had been making talking machines for Berliner, was his own company with many