The conjunction of the Women’s Movement and the advent of birth control spurred a sexual revolution in the ’60s and ’70s.
If the 1950s were all about marriage rates rising and settling down early, the 1960s and 1970s ushered in a new, liberal approach to dating: premarital sex was suddenly on the map, the birth control pill emerged – thereby allotting women power over their own fertility – and dating etiquette underwent a paradigm shift as the fulfillment of sexual desire took precedence.
With the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 – and with the gay liberation movement picking up traction in the ’70s – traditional models of dating and outdated conceptions of relationships were beginning to be challenged.
Operation Match , the world’s first computer-based dating service, was created by Jeffrey C. Tarr and David L. Crump, two Harvard undergrads, in 1965.
Users of Operation Match were asked to fill out a detailed questionnaire, and then mail in their answers (plus a $3 service fee) to Crump and Tarr, who transferred the questionnaires onto punch cards, which were then processed on an IBM 1401 computer system. Read more
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