The concept of dating really began at the turn of the 20th century. Prior to the late early 1900s, courtship was a much more private, unemotional affair.

Who came up with the idea of dating?

The word “date” was coined — inadvertently, it seems — by George Ade, a columnist for the Chicago Record, in 1896. In a column about “working class lives,” he told of a clerk named Artie whose girlfriend was losing interest in him and beginning to see other men socially.