Unusual types of gramophone records Sievey. Chocolate records about three inches in diameter, and small players made for them, were marketed as a novelty in Europe in 1903–1904. After a record wore out or ceased to amuse, it could be eaten. In 1973, the Kingdom of Bhutan issued several unusual postage stamps that are playable miniature phonograph records. These thin plastic single-sided adhesive-backed 33 RPM discs feature folk music and tourism information. Not very practical for actual postal use and rarely seen canceled, they were designed as revenue-generating novelties and were initially scorned as such by most stamp collectors. Their small diameters (approximately 7 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