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
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