Font History 101:
April 1st, 2002
My dad’s a graphic designer and I’ve been interested in fonts ever since as a kid, like at age 5, I found his workbook from his college typography class. (He went to college in the late 50’s when graphic designers (actually they were called “commercial artists” then, which I think is a better term) had to learn to letter by hand. The The Scourge of Arial [link via Kottke], doesn’t go back that far, but it does explain how Arial beat out Helvetica. Of course, it turns out to be Microsoft’s fault.
For a good overview of fonts (at least from a web design perspective) check out Webmonkey’s Web Typography Tutorial.