Online matchmaking services, such as Match.com and eHarmony , today attract millions of users willing to fill out questionnaires—and hand over cash—in the hope of finding love. Can computers really play Cupid? A lot of people seem to think so; eHarmony claims that its service has led to some 10,000 marriages since 2001. But the concept of using computers to smooth the path of romance is far from new. It was hatched by two undergraduates during a bull session at Harvard University in 1965.

“I had the idea that there might be a way to look at the characteristics of males and females to find out what couples might be compatible with each other,” says Vaughan Morrill. He talked to his classmate Jeff Tarr. “We were alone on a Saturday night, and we were drinking, and we came up with the idea of a computer dating system,” Tarr says.

The two were unlikely visionaries—just kids looking for something fun to do, and maybe make a few bucks doing it. “I don’t think either one of us was doing this as a career,” says Morrill, but inspiration took hold. They quickly came up with a questionnaire to use for matching people up. Eventually it ran several pages, asking everything from vital statistics (height, weight, age) to what a person’s reactions would be to hypothetical, and awkward, situations. Here’s one question:

“Your roommate gets you a blind date for the big dance. Good-looking, your roommate says. When you meet your date, you are sure it’s your roommate who is blind—your date is friendly, but embarrassingly unattractive. You:

1. suggest going to a movie instead.
2. monopolize your roommate’s date, leaving your roommate with only one noble alternative …
3. dance with your date, smiling weakly, but end the evening as early as possible.
4. act very friendly the whole time and run the risk of getting trapped into a second date.

Tarr found a computer science student in a Harvard math class and paid him $100 to write the programming code to help match up questionnaires that had complementary answers. The two students formed a company, Compatibility Research Inc., and they named their service Operation Match. The nascent business rented time on a room-size IBM computer on the Harvard campus. This was expensive, but the giant computer also provided Operation Match with an air of credibility and a powerful marketing tool. After all, the very idea of using computers was considered cutting edge in 1965.

David Crump, another Harvard undergraduate, who became vice president of the company, says that the image of computers worked both ways. “There was this notion that a computer was not romantic, and it takes all the romance out,” he says. “I think of that as kind of a silly reason, because