BeforeOK Cupid , before Match.com and before eHarmony , there was TACT . TACT was a matchmaking figurer based on a motorcar at the 1964 World ’s Fair that matched pen pals , TACT made its matches by analyse the consequence of 100 - doubt surveys .
https://gizmodo.com/the-big-lies-people-tell-in-online-dating-5586987
In a feature about on-line date for the New Yorker , Nick Paumgartner opens the piece of music with an anecdote about Lewis Altfest ’s skirmish with the pen pal simple machine that breathe in him to build TACT :
You fill out a questionnaire , feed it into the machine , and almost instantly received a board with the name and address of a like - minded player in some far - flung locale - your idealistic match . Altfest thought this was jolly slap-up . He called up his friend Robert Ross , a coder at I.B.M. , and they began consider ways to adapt this approach to find matches closer to home . They ’d heard about some students at Harvard who ’d come up with a program called Operation Match , which used a calculator to find date for people . A year later , Altfest and Ross had a epitome , which they called Project TACT , an acronym for Technical Automated Compatibility Testing - New York City ’s first estimator - see service .
The questionaire itself was unmistakably sixties , culturally speaking . Chock full of borderline politically - incorrect statements and gauzy sexuality archetypes , the results were fed into an IBM figurer on a punch poster :
Each client paid five dollars and answered more than a hundred multiple - option head . One division demand guinea pig to opt from a list of “ dislikes ” : “ 1 . Affected masses . 2 . Birth control . 3 . Foreigners . 4 . devoid love life . 5 . Homosexuals . 6 . Interracial marriage , ” and so on . Another question , in a section called “ philosophical system of Life Values , ” read , “ Had I the ability I would most wish to do the oeuvre of ( opt two ): ( 1 ) Schweitzer . ( 2 ) Einstein . ( 3 ) Picasso . ” Some of the interrogation were sex - specific . Men were call for to rank drawing of women ’s pilus styles : a back - comb updo , a Patty Duke bob . woman were asked to await at a threesome of sketches of men in various options , and to say where they ’d prefer to find their ideal military personnel : in ingroup chop wood , in a studio paint a canvas , or in a garage working a tower drill . TACT transferred the answers onto a computer punch card and eat the card into an I.B.M. 1400 Series computing machine , which then spit out your matches : five dreary plug-in , if you were a woman , or five pink ones , if you were a man .
But more than just a machine that randomly matched whoever , Altfest assay to apply the automobile as part of a complete divine service that matched citizenry together not only by personality , but geography as well . ab initio the Robert William Service was centered around the Lower East Side neighborhood in Manhattan :
Over time , TACT expand to the repose of New York . It would invite dozens of matched mates to unity party , cognise that the great unwashed might be more well-situated in a group context . Ross and Altfest enjoyed a brief media blitz . They wind up in the pages of the New York Herald Tribune and in Cosmopolitan . The Cosmo newspaperwoman ’s first match was with a gym teacher who told her over the phone that his favorite mutation was “ indoor wrestling - with missy . ” ( He stood her up , complaining of a backache . )
in the end , Paumgarten writes , Altfest lost interest in TACT , feeling like it was a thingumajig . And what ’s funny is that TACT was indirectly responsible for his getting married — after a sequence of foolishness , Altfest ended up on a date with a reporter who was there with then intention of tearing apart the dating military service . The rest is history .
And BTW , this account is only the tip of the iceberg of Paumgarten ’s well - written piece on the history and culture behind online geological dating . You should find out it out over at the [ New Yorker ] .
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