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
Nine Inches on to state that he found the ancillary characters to be a "splendid supporting cast" and that, of the novel as a whole, "once "Nine Inches" gets going... it turns into a dark, violent urban thriller". The novel was also reviewed by Maureen Carlyle for "Shots", who opined that "if you can stand the extreme violence and the ripe language, this is a pacey tale, and you can't dislike Dan, no matter how hard you try". Reviewing for "The Daily Telegraph", Mark Sanderson stated, of Bateman, "the biggest mystery about "Nine Inches", a tale of kidnap and general cack-handedness, is