In dating technology, the history of online dating traces the origin and development of the technology of Internet or "online" dating from the invention of email (1961) and the World Wide Web (1989) and their combined use in idea of online personals, dating sites, and Internet-based matching technologies beginning in the early 1990s.

Invention: Email + Internet
E-mail predates the inception of the Internet, and was in fact a crucial tool in creating the Internet. MIT first demonstrated the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) in 1961. [1] It allowed multiple users to log into the IBM 7094 from remote dial-up terminals, and to store files online on disk. [2] This new ability encouraged users to share information in new ways. E-mail started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate. Although the exact history is murky, among the first systems to have such a facility were SDC's Q32 and MIT's CTSS.

E-mail was quickly extended to become network e-mail, allowing users to pass messages between different computers by at least 1966. The ARPANET computer network made a large contribution to the development of e-mail. There is one report that indicates experimental inter-system e-mail transfers began shortly after its creation in 1969. [3] American programmer Ray Tomlinson initiated the use of the @ sign to separate the names of the user and their machine in 1971. [4]

The term internet, a shortened version of “internetwork”, meaning inter- + network, referring to a set of linked computer networks, came of use in the 1974 technical document “Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program” by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine. [5] In 1989, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Soon thereafter, in the early 1990s, Internet dating technologies began to emerge.

Internet-Email dating prototypes
In 1983, American engineer Andrew Conru launched WebPersonals.com and later FriendFinder (1996). The first online dating-matching site was MatchMaker.com, originally called "Christie's Matchmaker" and conceived as a pen pal type of site, launched in 1993; an evolved version of the 1983 dialup-based bulletin board system created by American Gregory Scott Smith in San Antonio. The leading pioneer in online dating, Match.com, was conceived in 1993 (launched in 95) by American electrical engineer and computer scientist Gary Kremen, who thought up the idea of making an Internet-style "electric classifieds" to replace the older 900-number print and dial-up classifieds. By 1996, there were about 16 dating websites, of which the most popular were WebPersonals.com (now LavaLife), FriendFinder.com, and OneAndOnly.com (now defunct). [6]

The online dating boom
In May 1999, Cupid’s Network Inc., owned and operated by American entrepreneur Daniel Bender, which included the property of CupidNet.com and AmericanSingles.com, was purchased by Matchnet, PLC (now Spark Networks) for $3.6 million. [7] This purchase brought a large amount of visibility and validity to the online dating industry and a number of new projects were soon started and funded.

2000s
Into the new millennium, Internet-based dating site conceptions have since flourished.

With the launching of eHarmony in 2000, the psychology-based matching site, conceived in 1997 by American psychologist Neil Warren, the push to bring a level of acadamia or science-based matching to online dating has emerged, in sites such as PerfectMatch (2003), eChemistry (2003), Chemistry.com (2006), and ScientificMatch (2007).

In 2003, with the launching of the "free dating" site PlentyOfFish by Canadian entrepreneur Markus Friend, who built the site as practice to learn the programming language ASP.net, there has been a push to make dating sites and personals free, a cost paid by the advertisers. [8]

In 2004, there were 844 lifestyle and dating sites, a 38 percent increase over the year prior. In 2007, in Britain alone, there were 141 dating sites. [9] Currently, loose estimates indicate that there are over 1,000+ dating sites in operation.

In December 2007, the pilot-plant dating site ScientificMatch (only available in Boston) launched, conceived by American mechanical engineer Eric Holzle after watching a television show on the "sweaty T-shirt study", requiring that users send in saliva samples. The physical samples, after being sent to a lab (with a two-week turn around time) for DNA processing, allow users to be matched according to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) compatibility, which equates to sexual smell attractiveness and offspring health. [10] This type of matching, in which physical samples and measurements are collected by dating sites, over that of the standard twenty-questions format matching, would seem to the tip of the iceberg for future online dating technologies.

References
1. CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System) – University of South Alabama.
2. Tom Van Vleck, "The IBM 7094 and CTSS", Multicians.org.
3. The History of Electronic Mail – multicians.org.
4. The First Email – openmap.bbn.com.
5. (a) Cerf, Vinton, Dalal, Yogen and Sunshine, Carl. (1974). “Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program”, December 1974 Version.
(b) Internet – Online Etymology Dictionary.
6. History of Internet dating - Lovesites.com, 22 Apr 08.
7. Daniel Bender (ITC Manager) – Energy Dynamics Corporation (our team).
8. Stross, Randall. (2008). "From 10 Hours a Week, $10 Million a Year", The New York Times, Jan. 13.
9. Allen, Katie. (2007). "Seeking Romance: GSOH and Web 2.0 Compatibility Essential: Online Dating Agencies are Changing to Attract the MySpace Generation." Jul 12, Guardian.
10. Daubs, Katie. (2008). “Love: It’s all in the DNA, U.S. firm says.” (PDF). The Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 24.