Henry Woodward

Henry Woodward was a Canadian inventor and electrician who patented a design for an electric light bulb in 1874. He was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1832 and studied medicine at the University of Toronto. He was interested in electricity and built his own laboratory in his father's barn. He experimented with electric arc lamps and carbon filaments. He partnered with Mathew Evans, a hotel keeper, and filed a Canadian patent application on an electric light bulb on July 24, 1874. It was granted on August 3, 1874, as Canadian patent number 3,738. Their light bulb consisted of a glass tube with a carbon rod filament and an inert nitrogen gas. They demonstrated their bulb to potential investors at a brass foundry in Toronto, but they failed to secure enough funding to develop their invention. They sold their U.S. patent rights to Thomas Edison, who improved their design and made it commercially viable. Woodward and Evans received little recognition or compensation for their work. Woodward continued his research on electricity and also worked as a physician. He died in Toronto on April 3, 1910, at the age of 78. He is considered one of the pioneers of the incandescent lamp and one of the most influential inventors of the 19th century.