The French government, fully appreciating the importance of the invention, determined to purchase it from the patentee, and to throw it open to the public. An account of the invention was published in June, 1839; and in the following month an arrangement was entered into, to the effect that, in consideration of M. Daguerre making the process fully known, a pension of 6,000 francs should be granted to him for life, and a pension of 4,000 francs to M. Isidore Niepce, the nephew of the original inventor of Photography, his uncle having died before the final success was attained. It was generally supposed at the time, that by the grant of those pensions the invention was thrown open to the whole world, as represented by the French Minister; but, nevertheless, M. Daguerre patented the process in other countries, and France alone reaped the benefit of a free use of the invention. Whilst M. Daguerre was thus successfully working out to perfection the plan of producing beautiful naturally-impressed pictures on iodised silver surfaces, Mr. Fox Talbot was at the same time nearly attaining the same results. The following is the account given by himself of his researches:[3]--"Having in the year 1834 discovered the principles of Photography on paper, I some time afterwards made some experiments on metal plates; and in 1838 I discovered a method of rendering a silver plate sensitive to light, by exposing it to iodine vapours. I was at that time, therefore, treading in the footsteps of M. Daguerre, without knowing that he, or indeed any other person, was pursuing, or had commenced or thought of, the art which we now call Photography. But as I was not aware of the power of mercurial vapour to bring out the latent impressions, I found my plates of iodised silver deficient in sensibility, and therefore continued to use in preference my photogenic drawing paper. This was in 1838. Some time after--in August, 1839--M. Daguerre published an account of his perfected process, which reached us during the meeting of the British Association; and I took the opportunity to lay before the Section the facts which I had myself ascertained in Metallic Photography." Whilst to M. Daguerre must be awarded the honour of having first brought to perfection the method of rendering permanent the images of the camera on metal plates, Mr. Fox Talbot may claim to be the first who perfected similar images on paper, which the comparative roughness of the surface alone prevented from being as delicately beautiful as the pictures of the Daguerreotype. He commenced his experiments in Photography in 1834; and on the 31st of January, 1839, he read a paper before the Royal Society, entitled, "Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing; or, a process by which natural objects may be made to delineate themselves without the aid of the artist's pencil."