Edison did not invent the Incandescent light bulb

I don't know why the McGuinty mob is so all-fired eager to ban the light bulb.

It should be on the provincial crest, beside the moose.

It was invented just down the street from Queen's Park.

Holy filament, Mike, Thomas Edison was from Toronto!?

No. New Jersey.

But Edison, bright though he was, did NOT invent the incandescent light bulb.

The glory should belong to Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans, pals in Toronto in the 1870s.

Henry was a medical student and electrician on Colborne St. Mathew ran the White Hart Hotel just up Yonge, across from today's Sam The Record Man.

The two sometimes got together to muck about with Henry's induction coil.

Electrical World and Engineer magazine, in 1900, described that eureka moment of 1873:

"While seated at dusk one evening watching the buzzer of the induction coil, the light of the spark at the contact post attracted their attention.

"It impressed them with the idea that if they could confine the spark in a globe a marvellous invention would be the result."

GLASS TUBE

Woodward is said to have held up his watch to the spark and exclaimed: "Why you can even see the time."

So the friends scurried over to Morrison's Foundry on King St. W. near York and got to work.

Their crude lamp was a glass tube filled with nitrogen, housing electrodes and a carbon rod.

They made six, connected by battery. Imagine that moment in the foundry.

Evans: "There were four or five of us sitting around a large table. Woodward closed the switch and gradually we saw the carbon become first red and gradually lighter and lighter in colour until it beamed forth in beautiful light.

"This was the most exciting moment of my experience."

Woodward was so inflamed he went to Paris to buy an advanced electric dynamo.

By 1876, the two friends had patents here and in the U.S. They waited for the millions to roll in.

Folks just laughed. Who needs a glowing piece of carbon? Investors bailed.

Henry Woodward was so ticked he sailed for England, never to return. Evans, burned out, retreated to his hotel.

Enter Thomas Alva Edison.

The great man had been working on the same idea, but was light years behind the Canadians.

So he bought the patent for five grand, a lot of glow back then.

Suddenly, the light bulb was American. In 1880, Edison began to market his new, improved version.

Woodward and Evans became a flicker of history.

These guys should be up there with Alexander Graham Bell and the Montreal woman who invented the Wonderbra.

Where are the statues, the plaques, the Woodward and Evans Day?

Surely, the Canada Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa ...

"We mention them only as an example of why inventors fail," says assistant curator Anna Adamek. Reasons include lack of cash, contacts and a good lawyer.

Besides, says Adamek, "no one really invented the light bulb. Others were working on it. It was a process. Woodward and Evans were part of the process."

REPLACE INCANDESCENTS

Well, I say let's give it to the Canucks. Certainly, they beat Edison to the switch.

Now, the dimbulbs at Queen's Park want to replace Ontario's 87 million incandescents with CFLs, compact fluorescent lights.

The ban on sales will kick in by 2012.

Energy Minister Dwight Duncan tells us this will save enough to power 600,000 houses. CFLs last 10 times longer.

Sadly, they also have lousy light, some mercury, a big price tag, and can't be dimmed.

Maybe by 2012, someone will have solved those problems or made incandescents more efficient.

Source:
http://torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2007/04/20/4079032-sun.html