CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/18/2024

The Lewis & Clark of computer dating: Operation Match

Thirty years before broad dating platforms like Match.com, forty years before niche sites like CougarLife and FarmersOnly, and fifty years before the total swipe-right takeover of apps like Grindr, Bumble, Feeld and Tinder, there was Operation Match—the very first computer dating service, developed and launched in 1965 by a curious Harvard undergrad from Auburn, Maine. Spreads here are from Operation Match: Jeff Tarr and the Invention of Computer Dating, authored by real-time Jeff Tarr authority, Patsy Tarr. Not only does the book—designed by world-renowned consultancy Pentagram—detail the history of Operation Match with a wealth of archival materials, essays and iconic quotations that build a multi-dimensional portrait of the times, but it gets into important moments and societal changes like the Kennedy assassinations, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and feminism that would forever change our culture, and thus the dating game.