Matthew Evans is one of two Canadians who developed and patented an incandescent light bulb, on July 24, 1874, five years before Thomas Alva Edison's U.S. patent on the device.

A portion of the 1874 actual patent application.

Evans, from Toronto, Ontario, and his friend Henry Woodward, made the light bulb by sending electricity through a filament made of carbon. Evans was a hotelier.

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