70 years ago today, The New York Times described the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II the previous day as “the birth of international television.”
The coronation was the first to be televised in full and the worldwide television audience for the coronation was estimated to be 277 million.
Twenty-seven million people across Britain watched the event live on the BBC Television Service, many having purchased or rented television sets specifically for that purpose. In Europe, thanks to new relay links, this was the first live broadcast of an event taking place in the United Kingdom. The coronation was broadcast in France, Belgium, West Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and US networks NBC and CBS had films flown in relays on non-stop flights for same-day broadcast.
Author William Shawcross wrote in 2013: "This system of government may seem archaic to those who consider themselves progressive, but it has worked remarkably well for centuries. Never better, perhaps, than under this monarch. And that is at least in part because she is utterly true to everything she experienced at her coronation."