Historedia
Episode 1 of 2

Patent Filing

When
July 24 - August 3, 1874
Where
Toronto, Canada
Part of
Evans and Woodward patent incandescent lamp

Woodward and Evans filed a Canadian patent for an electric light bulb on July 24, 1874, in Toronto.

The application described a lamp consisting of carbon rods mounted in a nitrogen-filled glass cylinder. The patent was granted as number 3,738 on August 3, 1874. This filing preceded Edison's U.S. patent by five years.

Sources

  1. Henry Woodward (inventor) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-06-28
  2. Incandescent light bulb Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-23
  3. Mathew Evans Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-26

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.