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
Unusual types of gramophone records of unusually long albums are listed below: The vast majority of records used a standard small spindle hole slightly more than " in diameter. The only common exception to this is the 7-inch 45 RPM record, which was designed with a center hole slightly more than 1.5" in diameter both for convenience in handling and to accommodate a very fast record-changing mechanism contained inside a correspondingly large spindle, as implemented in RCA Victor's early stand-alone "45" players. The spindle and any records stacked on it rotated with the turntable, so that each waiting disc was already up to speed before