The Arial font was developed in 1982 by a ten member team headed by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders at Monotype Typography. The typeface was designed so that a document created with Helvetica would be displayed and printed correctly without having to pay for a license.
Arial was first used on the IBM 240-DPI 3800-3 laserxerographic printer where it replaced Helvetica. Only in 1992, Microsoft chose the typeface to be one of their four core TrueType fonts for Windows 3.1.