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Queen Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor has died, ending the reign of Britain’s longest-serving monarch. She was 96.

During her 70 years on the British throne, Queen Elizabeth II oversaw reshaping the monarchy from an austere, closed-off establishment into a more public-facing institution, both in person and via the use of technology. Her coronation in 1953 was the first of its kind to be televised, and she was an early adopter of the internet, although it’s reported she didn’t write her emails herself but dictated them.

It’s hard to imagine but about 100 years before the Queen’s birth in 1926, we were relying on messengers on horseback, prior to the invention of the telegraph in and around the 1830s and its subsequent proliferation – not to mention the invention of radio at the end of the century. At the time of her passing, the world is a much smaller place, communications-wise, and the official announcement was made by her family online.