So Joan Ball, the mother of “dating”, convinced customers to trust the machine

When computers were as big as cupboards, when they worked with punched cards, when they were operated by scientists in white coats – it was necessary to avoid overheating, and after all the first laptops had the fan that came into action – Joan Ball she asked the engineers if they could help her manage a certain number of questionnaires. Doing it by hand took too long, and customers need to be served quickly. The engineers laughed (as much as the resilience of their engineering minds would allow). And they still didn’t know the lady’s business: connecting people. For friendship purposes, said the company name of the Friendship Bureau (there was originally the word Eros, removed to look like a serious company and to be able to place advertisements in the newspapers).

Joan Ball had read about an electronic program that managed the adoption of children in Switzerland, capable of evaluating hundreds of applications, and had set off on a mission. Of hers, she had come up with a detailed questionnaire to pair soul mates. Now the machine was needed to read and sort them. It was also necessary to convince customers that machine-made couplings were more judicious than hand-made ones. At the very least, they accounted for every variable: age, weight, height, complexion, education, work and hobbies, from swimming to social sciences to volunteering, via “gaming and betting” – each item had to have one to five approval points. Finally, there were the “opinions”: “I think the place of women is at home”, “I believe that criminals should be re-educated and not put in jail”. Nowhere did it say the meetings were “for marriage purposes,” Joan Ball points out: “My partner and I were the only ones arranging meetings between adults.” It worked: customers received various offers. By letter, or perhaps by post, or to be picked up at the agency, coded with a number: it was 1964, privacy was protected in this way. The following year two Harvard University students invented Operation Match, another way to find a soul mate – this is always said, even if it lasts only one afternoon – with the help of the computer. The official histories of the subject attribute the birthright to them, and the descendants up to Tinder. How nice the Anglo-Saxons who can say “dating” and that’s it. For example in the exhibition “The Museum of Dating” (in London until April 23).

In the documentary “The Lady of Computer Dating”, the artist-writer-curator Valentina Peri, specialized in the history of media and technologies in the Anthropocene – now, when without smartphones we get lost in front of the cinema – interviews Joan Ball. She had started her business at the age of 28, before her she was involved in fashion: she wanted to help people get out of loneliness. Now she is almost 90 – she was born in 1934 – and she seems happy that someone remembered her to interview her. As a child she had a difficult life. When she seemed to be all right with the computer Cupid she was actually in debt. But she had the algorithm – this was the secret, not so secret: one that examines the possibilities and calculates much faster than you – and an archive of 50,000 contacts. She gave them to the main competitor, she only wanted her to pay all her debts in return. It was 1973. In desperation, and to pass the time, she set about writing her autobiography. Despite being dyslexic, on the slips of paper that she found around (pure avant-garde, also in this case). Joan Ball is photographed on the cover, with a cabaret chair. Or as a tamer, she looks like she’s holding a whip. Title: “Just Me”.