1965: Operation Match

In the Old World, the marriage broker learned the personality traits and financial status of all eligible men and women and did a fairly successful job of matching compatible types.

     Today, like almost any other project in the United States, the match can be programmed by the use of IBM Computer 7090.

     The computer is part of the program called Operation Match originated by two Harvard University students who now use the system on 500 college campuses in the U.S., England and Canada.

     The marriage broker had his fee, so does the computer -- $3 apiece. But the computer also wants answers to 105 questions such as religion, musical preferences, sports and personality tests. Then it will find a person ranging in age from 17 to 27 who seems compatible with the first set of responses.

     -- "IBM Computer Pairing Off Students on 500 Campuses" (United Press International, November 1965): @

* " 'Match' Eliminates Much Hit-Or-Miss; May Make Some UNC Misses Into Mrs." (The Daily Tar Heel, September 23, 1965): @

* "IBM Mating Hits Penn" (The Daily Pennsylvanian, October 14): @

* "$3 Will Get A Date With 'Computer Gal' " (The Pittsburgh Press, October 24): @

* "Operation Match" (The Harvard Crimson, November 3): @

* " 'Operation Match' Dates On Way" (The Daily Illini, December 1): @

* "boy ... girl ... computer" (Look magazine, February 22, 1966): @

* "Matching Them Up" (Harvard magazine, 2003): @
* "Looking for Someone" (The New Yorker, 2011): @
* "Love in the Time of Algorithms: What Technology Does to Meeting and Mating" (Dan Slater, 2013): @
* "This 50-year-old app foretold the future of dating and socializing online" (Fusion, 2015): @
* "What Online Dating Was Like In The 1960s" (video, FiveThirtyEight, 2015): @ 

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