<P> In 1859, Moses G. Farmer built an electric incandescent light bulb using a platinum filament . He later patented a light bulb which was purchased by Thomas Edison . </P> <P> In 1872, Russian Alexander Lodygin invented an incandescent light bulb and obtained a Russian patent in 1874 . He used as a burner two carbon rods of diminished section in a glass receiver, hermetically sealed, and filled with nitrogen, electrically arranged so that the current could be passed to the second carbon when the first had been consumed . Later he lived in the US, changed his name to Alexander de Lodyguine and applied and obtained patents for incandescent lamps having chromium, iridium, rhodium, ruthenium, osmium, molybdenum and tungsten filaments, and a bulb using a molybdenum filament was demonstrated at the world fair of 1900 in Paris . </P> <P> On 24 July 1874, a Canadian patent was filed by Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans for a lamp consisting of carbon rods mounted in a nitrogen - filled glass cylinder . They were unsuccessful at commercializing their lamp, and sold rights to their patent (U.S. Patent 0,181,613) to Thomas Edison in 1879 . </P> <P> Heinrich Göbel in 1893 claimed he had designed the first incandescent light bulb in 1854, with a thin carbonized bamboo filament of high resistance, platinum lead - in wires in an all - glass envelope, and a high vacuum . Judges of four courts raised doubts about the alleged Göbel anticipation, but there was never a decision in a final hearing due to the expiry date of Edison's patent . A research work published 2007 concluded that the story of the Göbel lamps in the 1850s is a legend . </P>

When did the electric light bulb get invented