Queen Elizabeth II sends her first tweet

In a historic first, Queen Elizabeth II today sent out her maiden tweet while opening an information technology gallery at the Science Museum here.

The first tweet by a reigning British monarch read: "It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R."

The 88-year-old monarch removed a glove to send the tweet from the @BritishMonarchy Twitter account in front of around 600 guests including communications entrepreneurs and experts.

The Queen accompanied by husband Duke of Edinburgh toured the gallery, which explores the technological breakthroughs that have transformed how we communicate, listening to personal recollections of people whose first experience of television was watching the Coronation in 1953. The queen was also the first monarch to send an email in 1976.

"I mentioned earlier that Queen Victoria took a great interest in the invention of the telephone, and Your Majesty has followed in this tradition of embracing new 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. May I now invite you to join me so that you may send your first tweet," said Science Museum director Ian Blatchford at the launch.

The gallery, called 'Information Age: Six Networks That Changed Our World', is the first museum gallery dedicated to the history of information and communication technologies.

From the first transatlantic telegraph cable that connected Europe and North America in minutes rather than weeks, to the advanced computing power of the modern smartphone, it looks at how our modern connected world was created through six communication networks: the telegraph, the telephone, radio and television broadcasting, satellite communications, computer networks and mobile communications.

Lead curator Dr Tilly Blyth led the tour for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, which concluded with the Queen sending her tweet, standing in front of the monumental six-metre high aerial tuning inductor from Rugby Radio Station in the centre of the gallery.

This enormous object made of copper and wood was once part of the most powerful radio transmitter in the world and was donated to the Science Museum by British Telecom.

Information Age features more than 800 unique objects from the Science Museum collections as well as state-of-the-art interactive displays to illustrate the dramatic personal stories of those whose lives were changed by each new wave of technology.