'Abraham Lincoln Is Now Following You on Twitter'

While scanning the Web for any New York City events commemorating Abraham Lincoln's birthday on Saturday, I discovered that the 16th president, who was assassinated in April 1865, is, in fact, on Twitter.

Now, it turns out that the feed @1865lincoln is tied to the upcoming Robert Redford movie, The Conspirator, about said assassination. Still, the effort behind the Twitter feed, which officially launches on Feb. 12, Lincoln's birthday, seems a noble enough one: to not only promote the movie (of course) but also to present the president's words in a digestible form for the kids today.

So! If this fresh feed decides to break down the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's most famous and enduring speech, how many tweets would it need? Back-of-the-envelope calculations show the address to include 1,474 characters, meaning it would break down into roughly 10.5 tweets. So the first tweet would look like this: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposi

(And, just an aside: This reporter, at 1:42 p.m. on Friday, became the first Twitter user that this new feed followed. I received an email with the subject line: "Abraham Lincoln is now following you on Twitter." Not bad, not bad.)

tacitelli@observer.com and @tacitelli