On July 24, 1874, five years before Thomas Edison's U.S. patent, two Canadians, Henry Woodward, a medical student from Toronto, Ontario, and his friend Mathew Evans, a hotelkeeper, patented the first incandescent lamp with an electric light bulb. They understood that carbon was a conductor and made light inside a bulb by sending electricity through a filament made of carbon.
They did not have enough money to develop their invention for people to use and sold a share of their patent to Thomas Edison who was also struggling with his own light bulb experiment.
Modern light bulbs still work the same way as the ones invented by Woodward and Evans. The image is a copy from the actual patent application.
Among Woodward's other lesser known inventions: The left-handed screwdriver, the combination nosehair tweezers and salad fork, the "toe" cheese grater, and the "pocket fisherman", later made famous by Ron Popiel.
