ABSTRACT
A nytime a new form of communication is invented-the penny newspaper, Morse code and the telegraph, the ham radio, TV, or computers-men and women find ways to use that tech-nology to find love (Joinson, 2003). The definitive history of commercial computer matching has yet to be written, but it is known that in the 1950s, almost as soon as computers appeared, commercial matchmaking services sprang up (CBC Archives, 1957). Recognized as the first widespread computer matching service was Operation Match, which was created in the mid-1960s by Harvard students after a discussion of the evils of blind dates and mixers. They distributed thousands of questionnaires to college students at several universities and asked them to rate themselves on looks, intelligence, and other dimensions and also to indicate what they would desire in a partner on these same dimensions. In return for the completed questionnaire and a fee of $3.00, they were promised a list of compatible matches. Data were entered on punch cards and analyzed with an Avco 1790 computer (which was probably the size of a small room). According to media reports, it took the computer 6 weeks to generate the lists. Not surprisingly, the business failed (for a description of this experiment, see Leonhardt, 2006).
