HE STARTED by using the computer as a tool for music composition but it wasn’t long before His Majesty the King Bhumibol Adulyadej was using his desktop to explore the big wide world of Information Technology (IT).
His Majesty’s first computer was the compact Apple Macintosh Plus, which was introduced to the public on January 16, 1986.

It was given to him by Admiral ML Usni Pramoj, privy councillor and a renowned classical musician, who had watched His Majesty laboriously copying the notes of his compositions by hand for each of his musicians. ML Usni wanted to make the King’s work easier and decided to purchase a personal computer for the king as a tool to compose, save and print the musical scores.

“His Majesty said he knew nothing about computers,” ML Usni said at the time.

“But I had learned that you could type notes with the Macintosh Plus and it was also easy to use so I decided to present the computer to the king. His Majesty was very interested. He was a very thorough learner. Once he received the computer, he started learning how to use it by himself. And when His Majesty faced any problems, he would discuss these with an officer from the Communication Division who worked with him.”

King Bhumibol used his computer to write many royal songs, books and the outlines of his royal projects. His interest in computer and information technology grew stronger over the years, especially in terms of Thai fonts for word processing. He designed several Thai fonts, among them the Chitralada and Phuping fonts.

In May 1987, His Majesty took on another challenge. He started to create the Devanagari font, a script used to write the Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, and Nepali languages. Devanagari script is more complicated than Thai script because the letters are fused together in a variety of ways. Sometimes the individual letters can still be discerned while, at others, their conjunction creates new shapes. His Majesty finished the Devanagari font with phonetic symbols and presented it at the CU Academic Expo 1987. As a part of his presentation, HM the King typed the names of lecturers and Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who had helped him learn the script, in Devanagari.

His Majesty the King Bhumibol used black and white in his earlier New Year cards because he would like the receivers to pay attention to its meaning more than its colourful look.

His Majesty used the Thai fonts he had created on his New Year card for 1987 and faxed it to all officers and associates who worked with him.

While this was the first computer-generated card from the King, His Majesty had in fact been sending New Year greetings to his officers since 1975. He used “Gor Sor 9” as his penname for the card he created for New Year 1976, printing the royal song “Rao Su: (“We Fight”) with the English translation and telexing it to the military leaders for onward dissemination to all soldiers.

For his New Year 1978 card, the King printed a poem from his on-going translation of William Stevenson’s book “A Man Called Intrepid” – “Nai In Phoo Pid |Thong Lang Phra” in Thai – and again sent it to all the officers in his unit.

His Majesty sent a computer-generated New Year card to the public for the first time in 1989. For more than two decades, he continuously blessed his people with his cards and the media made it a tradition to print the King’s card on January 1. That tradition halted briefly in 2005 while His Majesty continued in his efforts to help the people in Thailand’s south who had been devastated by the tsunami.

New Year cards from the King reflected either the situation in the past year or his teachings, which always focused on simplicity, patience, perseverance, harmony and the way of the Buddha.

Dr Sumet Tantivejjakul, secretary general of the Chaipattana Foundation, who worked very closely with HM the King, says that all the cards from King Bhumibol were examples of living humbly and economically.

“The cards from the King might not be colourful but they had meaning. Our King always paid attention to simplicity. He cherished the meaning of everything and appreciated its |true value, no matter how small or insignificant it was. He wanted us to pay attention to the meaning, and not the fancy appearance,” he says.

This coming New Year will not be the same without the self-made New Year greetings from Thailand’s humble Monarch but every minute spent looking at a computer screen will bring back the good memories and the teachings of Thailand’s IT savvy King who loved to learn.

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