Times New Roman was commissioned by The Times [of London] in 1931 after they were accused of being "badly printed and typographically antiquated."
Times New Roman is the font that needs no introduction. It comes standard on nearly every word processing program known to man, but its origins are surprisingly more than “someone made a font that stuck.” British newspaper The Times commissioned a man named Victor Lardent to create a better font after a man named Stanley Morison had criticized The Times for being badly printed.
The font itself was hand drawn by Lardent, who used an older font called Plantin as the basis for the design. Lardent’s design was deemed Times New Roman and it debuted on 3 October 1932. The fon stayed in use until 1972. Since then it has been changed five different times.