Although Tarr’s ambition may have been to meet women, the success of Operation Match ironically kept him too busy to date. In fact, while Operation Match was a hugely influential moment in dating history, it wasn’t the first known online dating service. That honor goes to Joan Ball, a woman from the UK who started the St. James Computer Dating Service, later Com-Pat (get it?). Her program made its first match in 1964, a year before Operation Match went online. Operation Match was an inspiration for Dateline in the seventies and eighties, before big business computer dating began in 1995 with the birth of Match.com.

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Persons: Jeff Tarr, Vaughan Morrill, Patsy Tarr, Jason Tarr's, Patsy Tarr “, ”, Patsy, Jeff, Tarr, Morrill, scandalously, Joan Ball, James, “, Luke Brunning, Dr Natasha McKeever, “ There’s, ” McKeever, operandi, Douglas Ginsburg, Phillip Harrington, noughties, Ashley Madison, McKeever, Brunning Organizations: CNN, Harvard, Match, James Computer Dating Service, for Love, University of Leeds, IBM, Pew Research Centre Locations: Harvard