Queen sends 1st Royal email
Malvern, Worcestershire The 26th of March 1976 AD
Details are sketchy about what Queen Elizabeth actually typed – or had her people type for her – on the first royal email. We know that it announced that the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in Malvern was on the Arpanet system, and was made from that base, but nothing about the actual wording. Did she begin with:”BTW one’s army is online”? Did she end with: “Best, Liz”? Was it shunted into the spam file – probably not as at that time the only spam was the tinned variety of British culinary fame. And did it go to the Ministry of Defence, where it is still waiting to be dealt with?
By sending that royal email the Queen was continuing a tradition dating back to at least Queen Victoria , who was an early witness to the wonder of that other communications breakthrough the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell himself demonstrated it to her at the royal retreat of Osborne House on the Isle of Wight on January 14 1878.
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