nts; but its chief
distinction lies in its being one of his favorite haunts, and in the
fact that within its walls have been settled many of the perplexing
problems and momentous questions that have brought about great changes
in electrical and engineering arts during the twenty-odd years that have
elapsed since the Orange laboratory was built.

Passing now to the top floor the visitor finds himself at the head of a
broad hall running almost the entire length of the building, and
lined mostly with glass-fronted cabinets containing a multitude of
experimental incandescent lamps and an immense variety of models of
phonographs, motors, telegraph and telephone apparatus, meters, and a
host of other inventions upon which Edison's energies have at one time
and another been bent. Here also are other cabinets containing old
papers and records, while further along the wall are piled up boxes
of historical models and instruments. In fact, this hallway, with its
conglomerate contents, may well be considered a scientific attic. It is
to be hoped that at no distant day these Edisoniana will be assembled
and arranged in a fireproof museum for the benefit of posterity.

In the front end of the building, and extending over the library, is
a large room intended originally and used for a time as the phonograph
music-hall for record-making, but now used only as an experimental-room
for phonograph work, as the growth of the industry has necessitated a
very much larger and more central place where records can be made on a
commercial scale. Even the experimental work imposes no slight burden on
it. On each side of the hallway above mentioned, rooms are partitioned
off and used for experimental work of various kinds, mostly
phonographic, although on this floor are also located the
storage-battery testing-room, a chemical and physical room and Edison's
private office, where all his personal correspondence and business
affairs are conducted by his personal secretary, Mr. H. F. Miller. A
visitor to this upper floor of the laboratory building cannot but be
impressed with a consciousness of the incessant efforts that are being
made to improve the reproducing qualities of the phonograph, as he hears
from all sides the sounds of vocal and instrumental music constantly
varying in volume and timbre, due to changes in the experimental devices
under trial.

The traditions of the laboratory include cots placed in many of the
rooms of these upper floor