wood-workers, glass-blowers, metal-spinners,
machinists and chemists in the world find employment. Every known metal,
every chemical, every kind of glass, stone, earth, wood, fibre, paper,
skin, cloth, may be found in its store-rooms, ready for instant use. The
library contains one of the finest collections of scientific books and
periodicals to be found anywhere. These are the tools, and with them
Edison is constantly at work upon a great variety of problems.

The first thing he turned his hand to after his installation in his new
laboratory was the phonograph. The patient thought and experiment,
extending over many years, lavished on this wonderful invention are
almost unbelievable. The idea had come to him years before, when he had
worked out an instrument that would not only record telegrams by
indenting a strip of paper with the dots and dashes of the Morse code,
but would also repeat the message any number of times by running the
indented strip of paper through it.

"Naturally enough," said Edison, in telling the story, "the idea
occurred to me that if the indentations on paper could be made to give
off again the click of the instrument, why could not the vibrations of a
diaphragm be recorded and similarly reproduced? I rigged up an
instrument hastily and pulled a strip of paper through it, at the same
time shouting 'Hallo!' Then the paper was pulled through again, and
listening breathlessly, I heard a distinct sound, which a strong
imagination might have translated into the original 'Hallo!' That was
enough to lead me to a further experiment. I made a drawing of a model,
and took it to Mr. Kruesi, at that time engaged on piece-work for me. I
told him it was a talking-machine. He grinned, thinking it a joke; but
he set to work and soon had the model ready. I arranged some tin-foil on
it and spoke into the machine. Kruesi looked on, still grinning. But
when I arranged the machine for transmission and we both heard a
distinct sound from it, he nearly fell down in his fright. I must admit
that I was a little scared myself." The words which he had spoken into
the machine and which were the first ever to be reproduced mechanically,
was the old Mother Goose quatrain, starting, "Mary had a Little Lamb."

From that rude beginning came the phonograph, with which Edison has
never ceased to experiment. He has made improvements in it from year to
year, until it has reached its present high state of efficiency--a
state, howe