In the age of Tinder and the dating apocalypse, it's easy to have reservations about finding your soulmate through a questionnaire or mutual left-swiping. But if you were looking for love in the 1960s, maybe things wouldn't seem so bad. ESPN made a short video about the very first computerized dating service. In 1965, two chums at Harvard were feeling, eh, pretty much the same way you felt in college: single and thinking, there must be a better way to meet people. So they launched Compatibility Research Inc., a computer program that matched couples based on questions about themselves and their ideal mate. Regardless of whether or not it worked (for the record, it did—we meet three couples who got married after getting matched through the service), the business was profitable—the guys made tens of thousands of dollars, or the equivalent of $2 million today.
Ahem, prediction: These guys are getting a movie made about them, stat. Move over Coffee Meets Bagel, they did it first and did it better (just look at how much fun they're having in those photos!). We've already got the movie's tagline for you; it's a quote from one of the co-founders: "We weren't interested in making money or being famous. We wanted to find dates." Can you hear the suspenseful music in the background? That's some real talk.
[via FiveThirtyEight]
