A blast from the past. Operation Match was a punch card based dating system! - Mark Brooks
NY TIMES -- Mar 29 '06 -- Operation Match might have been this
country's first computer dating service. Jeff Tarr and Vaughan Morrill
came up with the idea for Operation Match in the mid-1960's. They had
some help from a Cornell dropout named Douglas Ginsburg. Operational
Match sent questionnaires to college campuses around the country.
Students rated their own looks, intelligence and interests on a scale
from one to five and described their ideal date using the same
measures. They then returned the survey, along with a $3 fee, to the
Operation Match offices in Cambridge, Mass. Students responses were
transferred to punch cards and fed into an enormous Avco 1790 computer.
Six weeks later, it spat out lists of mates for everyone. By the
time Operation Match was sold in 1968, it had solicited more than a
million respondents, a number of whom actually got married. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
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