Who invented the light bulb? If you said Thomas Edison, you're wrong. Canadian Henry Woodward invented it. Between 1873 and 1874, Woodward with the help of Toronto innkeeper Matthew Evans, invented a glass bulb with an enclosed carbon filament and nitrogen gas. It was patented in 1874. But that's where it ended because they didn't have enough money to produce and sell their own invention. One year later they sold the patent to (drum roll please) Thomas Edison.