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7th March 2019
03:56pm GMT
Today, as I visit the Science Museum I was interested to discover a letter from the Royal Archives, written in 1843 to my great-great-grandfather Prince Albert. Charles Babbage, credited as the world’s first computer pioneer, designed the “Difference Engine”, of which Prince Albert had the opportunity to see a prototype in July 1843. In the letter, Babbage told Queen Victoria and Prince Albert about his invention the “Analytical Engine” upon which the first computer programmes were created by Ada Lovelace, a daughter of Lord Byron. Today, I had the pleasure of learning about children’s computer 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 then does what all old people do on social media - sign off with "Elizabeth R" - just like how Hulk Hogan always ends his tweets with "HH". The post has received nearly 60,000 likes in just five hours - not too shabby, but not a patch on that egg that got 53 million. The Queen is a bit late to Insta, but she did join Twitter five years ago. The Royal Family IG account though has had over 2,000 posts before Elizabeth got hold of the password. 'Top Secret: From Ciphers To Cyber Security' is a Science Museum exhibition which will explore "over a century’s worth of communications intelligence through hand-written documents, declassified files and previously unseen artefacts from the Science Museum Group's and GCHQ’s historic collections". It opens to the public on July 10th.
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