Daguerre's agent Miles Berry applied for a British patent under the instruction of Daguerre just days before France declared the invention "free to the world". The United Kingdom was thereby uniquely denied France's free gift, and became the only country where the payment of license fees was required. This had the effect of inhibiting the spread of the process there, to the eventual advantage of competing processes which were subsequently introduced into England. Antoine Claudet was one of the few people legally licensed to make daguerreotypes in Britain. Wood, R.D., Annals of Science, 1997, Vol 54, pp. 489–506.
