Queen Elizabeth II has sent her first tweet through the @BritishMonarchy account – to open a new technology exhibition at London’s Science Museum on Friday.
The royal tweet was sent at 11:35am to 724,000 followers; although it was pre-typed by Palace officials and all the Queen needed to do was touch the screen at the event.
“It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R,” tweeted the Queen.
It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R.
— BritishMonarchy (@BritishMonarchy) October 24, 2014
Her Royal Highness and the Duke of Edinburgh were at the Science Museum in Kensington, West London, to open the first permanent gallery in Britain showcasing the history of information and communications technology.
The exhibition is called Information Age and covers the last 200 years, from the invention of the electric telegraph in the early 19th century to broadcasting, the web and smartphones. The gallery cost £15.6 million (US$25 million) and has more than 800 items on display.
#TheQueenTweetspic.twitter.com/jz69LOlGcD
— BritishMonarchy (@BritishMonarchy) October 24, 2014
Information Age takes visitors on an interactive journey though the history of modern communications. Visitors can see the first transatlantic telegraph cable, the equipment used in the BBC’s first radio broadcast in 1922, and you can listen to how telephone operators managed their work in a 1950s telephone exchange.
Ian Blatchford, the director of the Science Museum, invited the Queen to open the gallery and underlined how in her long reign she has taken a public interest in the development of communications technology.
“You made the first live Christmas broadcast in 1957 and an event relished by historians took place on 26 March 1976, when you became the first monarch to send an email, during a visit to the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment,” said Blatchford, addressing the Queen.
Something one doesn't see everyday... The Queen sends her first tweet to open #smInfoAge#TheQueenTweetspic.twitter.com/yOeK6Jlnxx
— Science Museum (@sciencemuseum) October 24, 2014
Tilly Blythe, the gallery’s chief curator, hopes that the exhibits will impress upon visitors that the latest digital revolution is not the only one in the last 200 years that has significantly changed people’s lives.
“We really want them to see that out predecessors lived through similar periods of change. Ours isn’t the only revolution – just the latest,” she told the BBC.
The gallery shows off a lot of British inventions, which have forwarded commination over the past 200 years, including early computers such as the ACE, designed by Alan Turing, as well as Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s, regarded as the father of the internet, NeXT computer.
But the Queen may reflect on her way home that the huge communication giants, like Google and Facebook, are not British companies.