Joan Ball (born 1934) started the first computer

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service in

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in 1964. Ball's computer dating service also pre-dated the earliest American computer dating services, like Operation Match at Harvard.

Early life

Joan Ball was born in 1934 and was the 6th child in her working-class family. She was abandoned by her mother when she was very young. During

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she was evacuated from London to the countryside to escape the aerial bombardments. Joan was sexually harassed by one of the foster families with whom she lived in the countryside. Joan Ball was dyslexic (although not diagnosed until she was 39) and struggled in school. As a coping mechanism she became the class clown so that she could make sure people "laughed with er and not at her. In 1949, Ball finished her last year of school and got a job as a shop assistant at The

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. Due to her dyslexia she had problems with writing and counting money.

Career and later life

Department store work

In 1953, Ball was hospitalized after a suicide attempt, after which she lived with her aunt Maud and uncle Ted. The same year, at the age of 19, she was hired at Bourne & Hollingsworth. In 1954, she left and started working in a store's dress department. Shortly after she started working for Berkertex, a leading fashion house in London.

Entry into computer dating

In 1961, when Ball was 27, she decided to leave Berkertex. She then took a job at a

marriage Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...

bureau before starting her own marriage bureau. She founded the Eros Friendship Bureau Ltd in 1962. She had trouble advertising her service early on because there was a widespread belief at the time that marriage bureaus were actually fronts for prostitution. Because she could not easily advertise in print, Ball relied on placing

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ads with the " Pop Pirates"—the pirate radio stations that operated just off the coast of Britain in the 1960s playing

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that the

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Com-Pat II

In 1971, there was a Post Office strike which halted all mail. It lasted almost eight weeks, and Ball's business couldn't operate during that time. The Daily Telegraph, the company's most successful advertising venue, refused to continue printing ads for Com-Pat after the paper changed their advertising policy. At the same time, the UK was wracked with major strikes and economic problems. In 1973, when she was 39, Ball was finally diagnosed with dyslexia while struggling to come to terms with her own depression. By 1974, with the recession worsening, Ball, in debt, decided to sell her company. She called John Paterson of Dateline and offered Com-Pat to him, if he agreed to pay all of the company's debts as part of the purchase, Patterson quickly agreed.

Personal life

In 1961, she met a man she refers to in her memoir as Kenneth. Kenneth would later become her sexual partner and would help her in her business, though they were never married. After the launch of Com-Pat ll, she and her partner Ken began to run into economic and personal problems. Because Joan and Ken weren't married, Ball felt she had no sense of security with him. She eventually moved into her own flat after living with Ken for eight years. After a series of personal difficulties, Ball converted to

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ball, Joan Women Internet pioneers Online dating services of the United Kingdom 1934 births Living people People with dyslexia Matchmakers Businesspeople from London 20th-century English businesswomen 20th-century English businesspeople