co.design:

Apple debuted TrueType in 1991, and to make sure it became a ubiquitous standard, it even licensed it to Microsoft, which introduced TrueType fonts with Windows 3.1. Quite suddenly, it became possible for millions of computer owners to display and use rich, sophisticated, and scalable typefaces created by the world’s greatest type designers and type foundries.

I remember the first demos of this system when it came out and being blown away by the possibilities it opened up to those of us in desktop publishing.