"Operation Match" Advertisment

Introduction

In the 1960s, ‘computer dating’ evolved without the internet: romantics could fill out questionnaires and mail them to companies like the Scientific Marriage Foundation, founded in 1957, that promised to connect couples based on computational analysis of age, occupation, religion, and income. Always the hotbed of technological networking, students at Harvard founded “Operation Match” in 1965 to create “computer marriages.” Participation cost $3 plus a stamp to send in the questionnaire to Operation Match’s founders Jeff Tarr and Vaughan Morrill, who would transfer the information to punch cards and run their program on a rented computer for cheap during the middle of the night. In an interview with Harvard Magazine, Tarr recalled that they would send people a letter “saying who they were matched to, with phone numbers,” with one woman at Vassar receiving over 100 matches (including one with her roommate). On display here is an advertisement for Operation Match in an issue of Columbia Spectator from 1966. Operation Match was eventually purchased as a program for matching compatible college roommates.

Additional Information

Label

"Operation Match" Advertisment

Author

Operation Match

Original Publication Date

1966

New Publication Date

1966

Publisher

Columbia Spectator

Location

University Archives

Case

8