[LINK] OT: QEII

[Roger Clarke]

Elizabeth R's first Instagram post
The Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday 9 March 2019

The Royal Family Instagram account has been around since 2013, but on 
Thursday the Queen took things into her own hands.  Queen Elizabeth II 
published her very first Instagram post memorialising her visit to 
London's Science Museum, where she opened the museum's new Smith Centre.

The queen ['off with her head' - apparently decapitated after a first 
paragraph of capitalisation] posted two photos of correspondence from 
the royal archives written to her great-great-grandfather Prince Albert 
by mathematician and inventor Charles Babbage in 1843.

In the letter, Babbage told Queen Victoria and Prince Albert about his 
invention the 'Analytical Engine' on which the first computer programs 
were created by Ada Lovelace, a daughter of Lord Byron.

"Today, I had the pleasure of learning about children's computing coding 
initiatives and it seems fitting to me that I publish this Instagram 
post, at the Science Museum which has long championed technology, 
innovation and inspired the next generation of inventors", she wrote, 
signing off as "Elizabeth R".


[Is the Smith Centre named after Winston Smith, I wonder.]

[Interestingly, neither the Kenso Museum's web-pages nor its Map makes 
any mention of a "Smith Centre".

[The only place it seems to appear is in an entry about Stephen Hawking, 
who is reported as having had lunch there:
https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/stephen-hawking-visits-the-science-museum/

[Time is relative after all, so the facts that the Queen opened it in 
March 2019, that Hawking had lunch there in February 2012, and that 
Hawking passed away in March 2018, are entirely explicable.]


-- 
Roger Clarke                            mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
T: +61 2 6288 6916   http://www.xamax.com.au  http://www.rogerclarke.com

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Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University