You might be thinking of buying a tablet for Christmas, and well, so is the Queen. Except she’s not buying one and rather than playing Angry Birds Star Wars Edition all day, HRH’s tablet will have a digital time capsule to look through.
According to the BBC, The Queen’s touch screen device will hold photos, videos and text collected from people who have recounted memories of the past 60 years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. That’s not a bad gift, and much cooler than a dusty photo album.
The recollections are those of more than 37,000 people from all over the world and submissions include memories from the likes of Prince Harry and Oscar ‘Blade Runner’ Pistorius.
Interestingly HRH is not getting an iPad for this, but a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Although 150 GB of data was collected, only 60 entries have been selected to appear on the tablet because that much data doesn’t fit on the device.
Royal Curation
The nice thing about being Royalty is that you have selected people who can filter through information like this for you. The items on the tablet were chosen by a panel of judges including the GD of The Royal Photographic Society and The Royal Librarian.
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The Royal Collection is a bit different to a private collection. It’s something that is put together and maintained by The Royal Librarian for the Sovereign in an official capacity, rather than something The Queen might have at Sandringham or Balmoral to peruse with a nice cup of tea. Instead, the tablet will be held at Windsor Castle.
The entire collection is yet to be competed, there’s around 80,000 entries to curate and it should all appear online. Though there are serious items in the capsule including records of the UK riots and footage of the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the project is not without humour as it has been titled the ‘Diamond (re)Collection.’
As a matter of record for forthcoming generations, the Royal Collection is held for successors. That means in five years time (or less) those who are able to access the collection can hopefully pick up the tablet and remark upon how old-fashioned the tablet seems. Such is the life of technology.
Image Credit: Adrian Dennis / Getty Images
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