Thesis writing took a new twist at Princeton yesterday when an inventive senior handed in five miles of wire instead of the more conventional typewritten essay.

James A. Lebenthal assembled on a wire recorder a 33,000 word history of the tactics employed by Governor Thomas E. Dewey in gaining his second Republican nomination for the presidency. Lebenthal included the transcribed highlights of the G.O.P. convention in Philadelphia last June.

The whole work takes five hours to play, Lebenthal said, but it took him nine months to gather his material, record it, edit it, and splice it together into a continuous narrative.

Lebenthal claims that he has handed in the longest thesis in the recorded history of Princeton University.