Born in April 1926, the late Queen Elizabeth II experienced a life and reign of great technological, social and scientific progress. She has never been shy about technology or science.

Despite this life of change, Queen Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, did not shy away from getting involved in technological progress. Here are four areas of Queen Elizabeth that changed dramatically in her lifetime.

expedition

on the 29th^th In May 1953, Sir Edmund Percival Hillary and Sherpa climber Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The news was not released to the public until the day of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, with media dubbing it “a gift to the Queen.”

It was considered one of the most exciting and difficult attempts ever accomplished at the time, but just 16 years later, in July 1969, three astronauts flew to the Moon as part of Apollo 11. , two people were walking on the surface.

A coin-sized silicon disk filled with messages from over 70 heads of state was left on the moon, and Queen Elizabeth’s section wrote briefly. ”

In October of the same year, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip congratulated the three astronauts in person at Buckingham Palace.

The Queen and her husband never hesitated to get involved in technological progress. Queen Elizabeth XI sent her first e-mail in 1977, getting to know her personally with her bosun-famous Peter Her Higgs.

Higgs initially refused because he felt the title of knight was being used for political purposes, but the Queen gave him the Companion of Honor. they were of similar age.

With the launch of Hubble in 1990 and the launch of JWST this year, we are looking deeper into a world far, far away than ever before. In Queen Elizabeth’s later years, companies such as SpaceX regularly launched reusable rockets into space.

communication

The way we communicate changed almost completely during the life of Elizabeth II. As a child, the Queen gave her first public speech in 1940 during World War II. This was her BBC radio broadcast which had just begun in 1922, four years before she was born.

Her coronation in 1953 was a major television event when television was relatively new. The British Museum suggests that “in her two months preceding her coronation, British audiences bought more sets than in any previous period”.

During World War II, British codebreakers used early computers to win the war. The “personal computer” didn’t enter the home or workplace until later in life.

Then came the internet. In March 1976, the Queen visited the Telecommunications Research Center in Malvern, England, and used the ARPANET (Military Computer Network Linking Universities, Government Agencies and Defense Contractors) long before its current use. I sent an “email”.

“There was an early type of Internet, but it didn’t operate in the way most people think of the Internet today,” said Aland Doolin, an associate professor of the history of technology at Monash University.

The late Peter Kirstein, known as the “European Father of the Internet,” set up the Queen’s first official email account, HME2, and guided her through the process of sending her first messages.

Her username was also very interesting. It is “HME2”.

“Today we think about ‘protocols’, the way computers communicate…that didn’t exist in the ’70s. So that email would have been sent to some sort of limited version of the Internet. ”

38 years later in 2014, she sent her first tweetand in 2019 she shared her first Instagram post.

travel

When the Queen was a child, ships were the only way to travel long distances. Amelia her Earhart and navigator Frederick Noonan went missing in 1937 when Queen Elizabeth was 12 years old.

Even in the 1950s, longer international trips could occur (with multiple stops to refuel) when the Queen first visited Australia (and many other Pacific Commonwealth nations) in 1954. took place in a boat called the SS Gothic.

But that’s not to say I’ve never flown before. When Edward became king in 1936, ‘King’s Flight’ was formed as the world’s first head of state air force. This became the “Queen’s Flight” after his death.

In 1952, she traveled from England to Kenya with Prince Philip on a British Overseas Airways Corporation plane called the Argonaut.

However, these flights were relatively short. It was in 1989 that the first Qantas flight flew non-stop from London to Sydney.

She was an absolute jet-setter throughout her life, with one expert suggesting she traveled as far as to orbit the Earth 42 times.

climate change

Queen Elizabeth’s lifetime also existed through incredible changes in the Earth’s climate.

A paper by a Swedish scientist predicted that carbon dioxide levels could change the temperature of the Earth as far back as 1896, but British scientists linked carbon dioxide to 1938 (the Queen is still when I was 12). Global warming increases in the earth’s atmosphere.

During her lifetime, the climate changed irreversibly, culminating in England’s record-breaking heat this year, rivaling the summer of 2018.

“The effects of climate change are disappearing from what was barely felt in the 1950s,” says Dorin. “And now we are in wildfires and floods.”

‘Climate change was the problem of the future’

While the new king, Charles III, was known to be a staunch supporter of environmentalism and Price Philip was chairman of the World Wildlife Fund, Queen Elizabeth’s political neutrality began in her later years. It just reached

In 2021, she was heard saying she was “irritated” by people talking about climate action but not taking action ahead of the UN’s COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.

At climate talks, she later said in a video message that many people hoped “the time for words has become the time for action.”