The royal tweet: Queen sends first Twitter message

The Queen has sent her first tweet, during a visit to the Science Museum in London.

The monarch formally opened the museum's new Information Age Galleries by touching a tablet screen to send her message around the world.

The 88-year-old tweeted through the @BritishMonarchy Twitter account, which was set up in 2009 and has 722,000 followers.

She posted: "It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting.  Elizabeth R."

The message was pre-typed, before the Queen published it to Twitter by touching the screen in front of an audience at the event. 

The £15.6m gallery features more than 800 objects and explores how breakthroughs have transformed the way people communicate over the past 200 years.

The Duke of York is the most prolific tweeter in the royal family, signing off messages he has written on the @TheDukeOfYork account with AY, for Andrew York.

The micro-blogging site has been used by her grandson Prince Harry, who sent his first official tweet in May, but he admitted during the summer he no longer has a personal account when chatting to a group of students who were promoting his Invictus Games on social media.

The Queen and members of her family are represented on Twitter by the account @BritishMonarchy, while @ClarenceHouse covers the Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

--Source: SkyNews