I am nothing to be ashamed of

2 Harvard Men Replacing Cupid With Computer

Sunday March 14, 1965 by TIMOTHY LELAND The sign on the door—written in big bold letters—advertised: YOUR BUSINESS IS OUR PLEASURE. YOUR PLEASURE IS OUR BUSINESS.

And inside, Saturday, two Harvard juniors were busy masterminding the cleverest business enterprise since J. D. Rockefeller invested in oil.

“We’re just about ready to get off the ground,” Jeff C. Tarr, ’66, told the Globe. “We should begin mailing by Tuesday.”

Jeff is co-founder of what could be the biggest moneymaking venture since Pres. Pusey launched the university’s Centennial fund drive.

It’s called Compatibility Research Inc., with headquarters in room G-35 of Winthrop House.

The business of this business is an item with a limitless market—love.

The Harvard entrepreneurs have captured Cupid. Or, to be more exact, they have computerized Cupid.

“For three dollars and five minutes of time, we’re going to provide any boy who takes our service with the name and telephone number of his dream girl. And for the same price, we’ll provide a girl with her ideal guy. It’s as simple as that,” Jeff said.

This is the way it will work. Each person who takes the service will be sent a questionnaire to fill out and return post haste to Compatibility Research.

These will then be coded onto IBM cards and whisked through a computer, which will analyze all the personality profiles and match the couples up scientifically in less time than it takes to blow a kiss.

“A computer,” observed Jeff, “can find the right date for a person in a split second, when it might take him or her three years to do it alone.

“People have too little time as it is these days, without spending a lot of it unnecessarily searching around for someone they have something in common with. Why waste the time?”

Some of the questions on the questionnaire, to the layman, might seem a little far off the mark, but Jeff—a social relations major—says each one has its own “special significance.”

One, for example, asks: What kind of men’s aftershave lotion do you prefer?

English Leather

Old Spice

Royal Lyme

Canoe

Presumably, two people who feel the same way about Old Spice may hit it off pretty well together.

Jeff and his co-partner—Vaughan Morrill III—incorporated the company last week with a total of $1250 invested in it. Since then, it has been operating with smoothness.

“We’ve got salesmen selling the service at between 50 and 60 colleges in the Boston area and we’ve already received over 1000 letters in response to our posters,” said Jeff happily.

Tuesday is D-Day for Compatibility Research Inc. That’s the day the first batch of questionnaires will be sent out.

By Apr. 9, we’ll start processing them in the computer, and within a couple of weeks after that, there should be a lot of happy new couples in the Boston area,” he said.

Does he plan to run his own questionnaire through the cupid-computer?