BBC – In the 1960s, computer dating services like Tact and Operation Match introduced algorithm-based matchmaking. Tact, launched in 1965, matched users based on questionnaires for $5 per match but struggled with slow processing and mismatches, even pairing siblings. Despite their short lifespan, these services pioneered tech-driven dating, shaping today’s online matchmaking industry.
CNN – Operation Match, launched in 1965 by Harvard students Jeff Tarr and Vaughan Morrill, was the first computer matchmaking service in the U.S. Using a 75-question survey, it connected thousands of date-seeking college students. Participants received potential matches' phone numbers for a $3 fee. However, the first computerized dating service was actually Joan Ball' UK-based St. James Computer Dating Service, which made its first match in 1964, a year before Operation Match went online.
BRIDES – Alex and Gladys Rysman matched on Operation Match, the first computer dating program in 1965. In 1965, two Harvard students launched this matchmaking service, which required filling out and mailing a questionnaire in order to receive a computer-generated list of possible matches. To participate in the service, Alex and Gladys answered 100 questions about themselves and their ideal date on a paper survey. After completing the questionnaire, they mailed it – along with a $3 fee – to the Harvard students, who used an IBM computer to process the answers. Based on the questionnaire, the computer gave them a list of the top six potential matches. Once Alex received his list, he only called one person: Gladys.
by Fabian Foo
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THE HARVARD CRIMSON – Feb 15 – In 1965, two Harvard students (Jeffrey C. Tarr and Vaughan Morrill) created the very first computer-based matchmaking service in the United States. They called it Operation Match. To enter, its clients filled out a paper survey with 75 questions about themselves and the same 75 questions about their date's ideal characteristics. They would then mail their answer sheet to Cambridge along with a $3 fee. Their answers would be recorded on punch cards and run through a room-sized IBM 1401 computer. Three weeks later, the clients would receive a sheet of paper with the names and contact information of their top six matches. The questions weren't scientifically designed. The founders sat down, thought about their own dating criteria, and just wrote them. The service quickly became popular, not only on Harvard's campus and around Boston, but at schools around the country. Soon after Tarr and Crump graduated, Operation Match's novelty faded. "Because of the Vietnam War, if I dropped out of college [to focus on the company], I would have probably been drafted," says Tarr. "And so, we sold it in two pieces for very little money."
by Alicia M. Chen
See full article at The Harvard Crimson
BOSTON GLOBE – Jan 13 – Finding a date by computer is commonplace today. Not so in 1965, when two student-run companies at Harvard rushed to usher in a new era of mating. Jeff Tarr decided he was fed up with coming home alone from mixers with Radcliffe, the women’s college across the way. Tarr raised $1,250 and recruited classmate Vaughan Morrill. He wrote a questionnaire that asked students to answer 75 questions about themselves and another 75 about their “ideal date.” He paid a friend $100 to program an IBM 1401 that would match questionnaires with similar responses. Tarr and Morrill distributed the questionnaire to Boston-area colleges. Students filled it out and returned it with a $3 subscription fee. Within days the student would receive a computer printout with the names, phone numbers, addresses, and graduating years of six people. By the fall of ’65, six months after the launch, ~90K Operation Match questionnaires had been received, amounting to $270K in gross profits. It didn’t take long before Operation Match met its first competitor. In the summer of 1965, David Dewan, an MIT grad, was preparing to enter Harvard Business School. Over the summer he drafted his own dating questionnaire and taught himself how to write code for the Honeywell 200, a car-sized contraption that, at around 3 in the morning, could be rented for $30 an hour from a small Boston mutual-fund company called Fidelity. He borrowed $10K from his grandfather to start his business. He called the service Eros and its parent company Contact Inc. He charged $4. In one distribution of questionnaires, he drew 11K responses at $4 each, or $44K in gross profits, more than $250,000 in today’s dollars. Things got ugly, fast. On September 29, 1965, campus police collared Dewan for the dubious crime of “distributing questionnaires without a permit.” The next day the Crimson splashed the news across its front page: “University Police Eject Man From Winthrop House.”
THE ATLANTIC – Feb 14 – Computers did exist in the '60s, in some form — not personal computers, but computers nonetheless. These machines could crunch the numbers on our personalities and spit out intimate matches. But in the 1960s, what was known as "computer dating" involved no Internet and often few to no visuals. People submitted their vital stats along with questionnaires by mail. People waited patiently for days, weeks, and months as companies processed their answers on intelligence, attractiveness, quirks, and preferences, and would perhaps find them matches. The questionnaire model dated back to the Scientific Marriage Foundation in 1957 and flourished throughout the '60s and '70s. "Inevitably, the singles game is putting technology to use with punchcard-plotted introductions that cost $5 to $150. Harvard students founded a landmark computer-dating service called Operation Match. FULL ARTICLE @ THE ATLANTIC
GQ – Jan 28 – Though computer-dating was still a new concept in 1965—back then, the answers to personality questionnaires were converted into punch cards which were fed into computers the size of small cars—two rival outfits had already popped up at Harvard: Operation Match and Contact Incorporated. Very little distinguished the two companies. Operation Match sold its questionnaires for $3. Contact charged $4. "I don't know why all this social networking stuff starts at Harvard," says Chris Walker, now 66, then a player at the center of Harvard's first geek-on-geek war. David Dewan—then a Harvard MBA candidate—was spoiling for a fight. He told the Crimson that Operation Match's questionnaire was "less sophisticated, appealing to the big, Mid-west universities." In response, it appears, the founders of Operation Match alerted the campus police that Dewan was about to paper Harvard Yard; Dewan was collared on the steps of Winthrop House for the dubious crime of "distributing questionnaires without a permit." Dewan began winding down his computer dating service in 1967. As for Operation Match, Walker and his partners set up an office in New York, but struggled. "It was easier when we had a captive audience, people at single-sex colleges with time on their hands and high hormone levels," Walker says. "We all felt it was time to move on with real careers." Operation Match was bought by a student marketing company. FULL ARTICLE @ GQ
Mark Brooks: Where's the idating industry version of Kayak.com? It's about time we made a success of a search aggregator. (Full Disclosure: Chris Walker / DatingStartsHere.com are a client of Courtland Brooks)
NY TIMES – July 11 - Jennifer Davis Tarr is to be married today to Christopher Roger Coyne. Roger is working on the development of OkCupid.com, an Internet dating service, of which he is the president. He was a founder in 1999 of TheSpark.com, a humor Web site, and of SparkNotes, a series of condensed versions of classic literature, world history, math, economics and philosophy study guides. He also graduated from Harvard. Jennifer's father, when he was at Harvard in the 1960's, was a founder of the first computer dating service, called Operation Match, for which applicants would send in a paper form, which would be turned into punch cards and six weeks later they would get a list of names and phone numbers.' FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: Coincidences or fate? This is old news from 2004, but interesting news.
OPW — Apr 12 — Christopher Walker teamed up with a couple of friends at Yale to launch the first “computer” dating company called Operation Match in 1966. All of the questionnaire answers had to be typed up on computer punch cards and run through the computer by hand. For $3, you would get a list of six names and addresses for potential matches. 43 years later, in March 2009, and following the launch of his free online dating site, PersonalQuest.com, he received an email from Brenda Serotte who wrote to tell him that she has been very happily married to her husband Jeff for 42 years – and they met through Operation Match! She was working in New York City, and he was stationed in New Jersey in the Navy, and though they both initially liked each other’s names on the list, they “first went through three disastrous dates apiece” before they met. Brenda said “I’ve always wanted to thank you guys.”
Mark Brooks: Success stories are what keep the Courtland Brooks team additionally motivated. We were just a bit taken aback to see one from 42 years ago. (Full Disclosure: Chris Walker is a client of Courtland Brooks)