Tarr and Morrill knew nothing about computers. So Tarr paid $100 to a computer science student to write a program code designed to match up questionnaire. All the data from the questionnaire had to be transferred to punch cards. The team rented a room-sized computer and took six weeks to produce a match list. Questionnaire participants then received a letter saying who they were match to, along with phone numbers. Most were very pleased. One student got 100 possible matches. One of them was her boyfriend!
The concept of using a computer for romance was viewed both negatively and positively in the mid 60s. There was a belief that using computers would take all of the romance out of dating. But the idea of using computers at that time seemed very modern. Thanks to publicity in Look magazine and appearances on a few television shows, Operation Match continued to grow. In its first year, the service ended up with 7,800 respondents. By 1968, Operation Match had more than a million respondents, and the mail was coming from colleges nationwide. Jeff Tarr and Vaughan Morrill sold the company to investors, who used the technology to match college roommates.
Tarr and Morrill’s computer dating was an idea before its time. When the personal computer became popular, electronic matchmaking became more common. Then the introduction of the internet also increased the creation of many new dating services with customers numbering in the tens of millions. They all run on essentially the same principles as Operation Match, but the technology is much more sophisticated-and certainly doesn’t rely on punch cards!