MASHABLE – Mar 9 – A group of men at Harvard get credit for the first computerized dating service, called 'Operation Match.' But it was actually a woman in England who first devised a way to determine compatibility using a computer. Joan Ball founded and ran the St. James Computer Dating Service, which she later re-named Com-Pat (short for "computerized compatibility). She translated survey answers about what a prospective lover did not want in a partner to punch cards, which she ran through a time-shared computer. Her program would reveal the "match" in the system, and people using the service would receive the name and address of whoever they had been paired with. She made the first match-by-computer in 1964 – a year before Operation Match at Harvard was up and running.
by Rachel Kraus
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Summarized by the IDEA team
