‘It felt risqué:’ How a computer dating service launched in 1965 changed our love lives

(CNN) — Your business is our pleasure. Your pleasure is our business.”

This was the slogan hung outside a Harvard dorm room in 1965, marking the headquarters of the first computer matchmaking service in the US. Decades before Tinder and OK Cupid, there was Operation Match.

Some of today’s dating apps keep us playing the field, but the first foray into computerized matchmaking developed from an earnest desire for men to meet members of the opposite sex. Bored of monotonous organised mixers with women’s colleges, and unable to meet many women on campus at Harvard, classmates Jeff Tarr and Vaughan Morrill were inspired, after an evening of drinking, to see whether a computer could find them a date.

Although Tarr’s ambition may have been to meet women, the success of Operation Match ironically kept him too busy to date. He did find love some years later, through a different singles staple: a blind date. For Jeff’s 80th birthday earlier this year, his wife Patsy Tarr wrote a book about Operation Match as a party favor, an endeavor that snowballed into an official publication.

“Dating was completely different,” said Patsy Tarr, reflecting on the 1960s love scene. Patsy had used Operation Match before meeting Jeff, but had no luck. “It felt very risqué and exciting to be able to meet someone through a computer, as opposed to going through the traditional route.”

A questionnaire instead of swipes

In the early days of working together, Tarr and Morrill recognised that their main clientele would be date-hungry college students like themselves. Operation Match was developed with their needs (and desires) in mind. At the heart of the project was a 75-point questionnaire, covering hobbies, education, physical appearance, race and — scandalously for 1965 — attitudes towards sex. Participants were asked to answer twice, once describing themselves, the other describing their ideal date.

Operation Match’s questionnaire still catered to norms that feel old-fashioned now, by asking women whether they had found their “prince charming” and men whether they “would rather meet an obedient, sexy, not so smart college girl.” However, it was also a vehicle for social change. The availability of the contraceptive pill on one hand, combined with the persistence of traditional marital expectations on the other, meant that the mid-1960s was a complex time for young women looking to mingle.

In their desire for exploration, women carved out new paths that have changed western dating practices in the long term. Many of us date differently now — marriage may not be top of mind, and we look for partners in places outside our immediate social circle — and our matchmaking methods reflect that.

In fact, while Operation Match was a hugely influential moment in dating history, it wasn’t the first known online dating service. That honor goes to Joan Ball, a woman from the UK who started the St. James Computer Dating Service, later Com-Pat (get it?). Her program made its first match in 1964, a year before Operation Match went online.

“There’s a perennial debate about whether dating apps reflected social change, or whether they drove social change, and I think the correct answer is that sort of both happened”, said Dr Luke Brunning, who, along with Dr Natasha McKeever, heads the Centre for Love, Sex and Relationships at the University of Leeds, along with Dr Natasha McKeever.

“There’s been a prioritization of the idea that you should be able to find somebody who’s a perfect match for you, wanting to craft the best life and best relationships for ourselves. A hundred years ago, we’d have been happier to just go into a relationship and do our best to make it work,” McKeever told CNN.

With the rise of computer dating, suddenly, there were plenty more fish in the sea.

An ‘IBM machine’ instead of a phone

Tarr and Morrill’s Operation Match was not based on an algorithm developed over years of data collection, and it definitely wasn’t operated on a smartphone. Tarr and Morrill raised funds to rent time on a computer, back then known as an IBM machine. In the mid-60s, this whirring mechanical device the size of an entire room was an object of profound mystery to the average American. Wrapped up in Operation Match’s modus operandi was the tantalizing question of whether a computer really could anticipate the compatibility between two people — could it predict ‘the spark’?

For cupid’s computerized arrows, a three-dollar fee was deemed appropriate, and within six months of launch approximately 90,000 questionnaires were completed. In return, participants were sent the names and phone numbers of five potential matches. The act of picking up the phone was left to them.

Now, the technology is old news to online daters, but it has taken almost 60 years of developments to build the swipe based, gratification-led, multi-billion-dollar online dating industry of today. Operation Match was an inspiration for Dateline in the seventies and eighties, before big business computer dating began in 1995 with the birth of Match.com. The noughties witnessed the rise of more niche ventures like Grindr, Ashley Madison, and PrimeSingles.net. In 2009, Match Group formed a conglomerate that now owns Tinder and Hinge, two of the biggest dating apps in the market.

Last year, statistics from the Pew Research Centre suggested three in ten Americans have used dating apps, but it’s hard to tell if finding love is still the main mission.

“I think we’re all aware that there are these big companies that have financial incentives in keeping us glued to our phones. There are algorithms that are influencing our behaviour that we don’t know about, we simply don’t understand how they work”, said McKeever.

Brunning added: “You might see people trying to take on the big players by leaning into values that they’re neglecting. We might see attempts to be very transparent about how algorithms work.”

Dating apps like Thursday, that prioritise in-person gatherings, have grown in popularity in recent years, as dating dangers like ghosting, catfishing and scamming have become common problems.

The days of getting someone’s phone number in the mail may be behind us, but the hunger for real connection remains.

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