History of Stanford and dating - Printable Version

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History of Stanford and dating - Mick - 02-10-2026

Interesting history of automated dating efforts at Stanford University...I always thought of dating as the prototypical personal organic rainmaking experiment, but it appears that a little cloud seeding has a history at the place of Tall Trees...

In 1959, Jim Harvey, ’58, and Phil Fialer, ’60, MS ’64, enrolled in Math 139, Theory and Operation of Computing Machines. The draw: getting to do a project using Stanford’s IBM 650 mainframe computer. The pair chose to try their hand at matchmaking and put together questionnaires for the Happy Families Planning Service. The students were limited to five or 10 minutes on the mainframe, so they initially were able to run the punch cards for only 10 couples. But with the help of some lock-picking skills, Fialer and Harvey returned to the lab late one evening and ran the data for the rest of the questionnaires—a total of 49 couples.
Punch-Card Love | STANFORD magazine

In 2016, the Stanford Dating Experiment...Nitish Kulkarni launched a project to match interested anonymous participants between people who meet others for the first time.  
Announcing The Stanford Dating Experiment
Stanford Dating Experiment - Frequently Asked Questions

And a variation...The Marriage Pact
The Marriage Pact, a Stanford economics project that has expanded to nearly 90 colleges, is disrupting dating apps by not focusing on looks | Fortune

And most recently, DateDrop, a Stanford experiment to mix and match 5,000 singles by a student who built a matchmaking algorithm for high achievers...
Matchmaking platform ‘Date Drop’ delivers weekly love to undergrads 
Can Date Drop save us all? Stanford's problem with gamifying love
A Stanford Experiment to Pair 5,000 Singles Has Taken Over Campus - WSJ

It's had a slightly rocky go of it...
Marriage Pact sends cease and desist to Date Drop

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RE: History of Stanford and dating - TonyLima - 02-10-2026

I was at MIT in the late 1960s when Operation Match opened. It was one of the first computer dating services. That’s how I met my first wife. We later admitted we both lied on the questionnaire. (Disclaimer: this is all from my ever-less-accurate memory.)

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