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Joan Ball (born 1934) started the first
computer dating
Dating is a stage of romantic relationships in which two individuals engage in an activity together, most often with the intention of evaluating each other's suitability as a partner in a future intimate relationship. It falls into the categor ...
service in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
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
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
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
London Co-operative Society
The London Co-operative Society (LCS) was a consumer co-operative society in the United Kingdom.
History
The Society was formed in September 1920 by the amalgamation of the Stratford Co-operative Society and the Edmonton Co-operative Society, ...
. 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
radio
Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...
ads with the "
Pop Pirates"—the pirate radio stations that operated just off the coast of Britain in the 1960s playing
rock and roll music
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It originated from African-American music such as jazz, rhythm an ...
that the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
had banned.
Ball's company focused on long term match-ups and relationships—primarily trying to achieve marriages for clients—and catered to an older crowd who were looking to settle down or who had been previously
divorced.
In 1964 Joan changed the name of her marriage bureau to the St. James Computer Dating Service, and the bureau ran its first set of computer match ups in 1964. This made Ball's service the first commercially successful computer dating service in either the UK or the US.
In 1965, Ball merged her company with another marriage bureau run by a woman and together they formed Com-Pat, or Computer Dating Services Ltd. Shortly after the merger, the owner of the other marriage bureau sold out her share in the company to Joan and Joan became the sole proprietor of Com-Pat.
Dateline, founded by
John Richard Patterson in 1966, was a rival to Com-Pat. With this new rivalry, Ball saw a need for more advertising. By 1969, her company was receiving a good response to their ads in
News of the World.
Joan advertised in
The Sunday Express
The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
,
Evening Standard
The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format.
In October 2009, after be ...
, and
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
—all major British newspapers at the time. At this time, Ball was running both Com-Pat and Eros. She decided to sell Eros and focus on Com-Pat, due to her belief in the future of computerized dating and the potential growth of a service like Com-Pat.
Com-Pat II
In 1970, Com-Pat Two was launched. Joan and her company were using the most advanced matching system created at the time. The system used a questionnaire, and gave a list of four of the top matches at the end.
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
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...
.
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