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Because Britain had a ban on exporting patents at the time and would search people leaving the country for patent documents, with jail time penalties.

• abfan1127 5y ago
  certainly that was before email, encryption, and zip files?
  • monocasa 5y ago
    Yes, this was the late 18th, early 19th century. A country's IP protectionism schemes obviously take a different approach now given modern communications media.