Published July 12, 2010

After discovering what Twitter looked like 100 years ago — as seen in a dusty, yellowed copy of The Newtown Bee dated 1913 — I was delighted to discover the little community paper in Connecticut still exists. (Family-owned since 1877.) Not only that, the Bee tweets (@TheNewtownBee)!

Reporter Nancy Crevier got wind of the blog post and interviewed me by phone for a story:

Back To The Future — How ‘Tweet’ It Is
When Mr Smith shared with him a copy of the January 3, 1913, Newtown Bee that had belonged to his great-great-great-grandfather, Botsford H. Peet, and which had recently come into his possession, Mr Phelps was as intrigued as the web developer about the style of writing common to that era of newspapers. Newsy bits of information were regularly published on the front page and throughout, most of them no more than several words long — just like modern tweets.

I just like that they call me Mr. Phelps.