This was interesting- not too exciting, but informative. You may require some ties to the graphic design world in order to fully appreciate. It's insane how often this font is used. Basically I think it was born as an awesome alternative to crappy fonts that dominated in the 50's & 60's, kind of like how the grunge movement saved us all from hair bands.
One of the themes is- you either love or hate Helvetica- didn't realize it, but I'm a hater. I've designed thousands of logos and never use Helvetica, and challenge anyone to find even a scrap of Helvetica in my portfolio here.