“The Tinder of the 1960s. How a computer-based dating service launched in 1965 changed the lives of generations to come October 22, 07:31 a.m. Share: Advertisement for the first US dating app, Operation Match (Photo: Courtesy Patsy Tarr) Two college students in 1965 invented a way to make it easier for themselves and for others to meet people of the opposite sex – Jeff Tarr and Vaughn Morrill created the first electronic dating service in the United States. Created”, — write on: ua.news
Advertisement for Operation Match, the first US dating app (Photo: Courtesy Patsy Tarr)
In 1965, two students invented a way to make it easier for themselves and others to meet people of the opposite sex — Jeff Tarr and Vaughn Morrill created the first electronic dating service in the United States. Built on a prehistoric IBM computer, Operation Match asked men and women to fill out a questionnaire and then searched for them “the perfect couple,” writes CNN.
“Your business is our pleasure. Your satisfaction is our business.” Such a slogan hung on the wall of a Harvard dormitory room in 1965, marking the headquarters of the first computer dating service in the United States. Decades before Tinder and OK Cupid, Operation Match was born.
The computerized matchmaking project arose from the sincere desire of two young men to meet women of the opposite sex. Bored with monotonous parties at women’s colleges and unable to connect with women on the Harvard campus, fellow students Jeff Tarr and Vaughn Morrill, after a night of drinking, were inspired by the idea to see if a computer could match them.
Although Tarr craved female attention, the success of Operation Match ironically made him too busy to date. He found his love a few years later, thanks to another way of meeting: a blind date. For Jeff’s 80th birthday, which he celebrated in early 2024, his wife Patsy Tarr wrote a book about Operation Match.
“Dating was very different back then,” Patsy writes, reflecting on 1960s love affairs. Before meeting Jeff, she used Operation Match but had no luck. “It was very risky and exciting to be able to meet someone through a computer, as opposed to the traditional way.”
Questionnaire instead of swipes
In their early days together, Tarr and Morrill realized that their main clientele would be college students as eager to date as they were. Operation Match was designed with their needs in mind (and desire). The project was based on a 75-item questionnaire covering hobbies, education, appearance, race and — scandalously for 1965 — attitudes toward sex. Participants were asked to answer twice: once to describe themselves, and once to describe their ideal date.
The Operation Match questionnaire may seem old-fashioned now. The women were asked if they had found theirs “charming prince”, and men – whether “they would like to meet an obedient, sexy, not too capricious student”. However, even this was a testament to societal change, where the availability of birth control pills combined with the maintenance of traditional marital expectations.
Although Operation Match had a huge impact on the history of this business, it was not the first famous online dating service. That honor goes to Joan Ball, a woman from Great Britain who founded the computer dating service St. James, later Com-Pat. Her program identified the first match in 1964, a year before Operation Match went online.
“There has been a long-standing debate about whether dating apps are a reflection of social change or whether they are driving it. I think the right answer is that it’s both,” says Luke Bruning, who, along with Natasha McKeever, heads the Center for Love, Sex and Relationships at the University of Leeds.
“What came to the fore was the idea that you should be able to find someone who is perfect for you, while striving to create the best life and the best relationship for yourself. A hundred years ago, we would have been happy to just get into a relationship and do everything we could to make it work,” McKeever said in an interview with CNN.
“IBM machine” instead of a smartphone
Tarr and Morrill raised funds to rent time on a computer then known as an “IBM machine.” In the mid-1960s, this loud, room-sized mechanical device was out of reach for the average American. At the heart of the Operation Match method was a tantalizing question: can a computer really predict the compatibility between two people, i.e. “spark”.
The cost of computer “cupid’s arrow” was three dollars. About 90,000 questionnaires were completed within six months of the launch. Participants received the names and phone numbers of five potential partners.
It took nearly 60 years to build a multi-billion dollar online dating industry based on smartphone swipes that is worth billions of dollars today. Operation Match inspired Dateline in the 1970s and 1980s. With the appearance of Match.com in 1995, the big computer dating business started. Other projects such as Grindr, Ashley Madison and PrimeSingles.net appeared in the zero. In 2009, Match Group formed the conglomerate that now owns Tinder and Hinge, two of the biggest dating apps on the market.
Last year, according to statistics from the Pew Research Center, three out of ten Americans used dating apps, but it’s hard to say whether finding love is still the main mission of these apps.
“We all know there are big companies financially interested in keeping us on our phones. There are algorithms that influence our behavior that we don’t know about, we just don’t understand how they work,” says Dr. McKeever.
Dating apps like Thursday, which favor in-person meetings, have grown in popularity in recent years as the dangers of romance scams have become more widespread.