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[James Allan]

Alan Sondheim wrote:
 > Anyone know the history of sans serif?

http://www.webreference.com/dlab/9802/sansserif.html

Not so early (if a quick web check is accurate); 1816, UK was the first 
appearance. What I recall, from days spent at the Archives of Ontario, 
is it's 19th century use was in adverts and used as a stop or punch 
("Improved", "And" etc.) and if the site below is correct things haven't 
changed:

from: http://www.redsun.com/type/classification/

Research has unveiled that we grasp words as a whole by comparing with 
the acquired samples in our brain. Serifs help us recognizing these 
samples. A sans serif text has to be read letter by letter. Well, long 
texts are unfavorable. It is recommended that you use sans serif faces 
for small (smaller than 8pt) and very large sizes. Therefore, sans serif 
faces are used for footnotes and headlines. Generally one serif (used 
for body text) and one sans serif are a good mixture.