1877 US in baseball; metaphorical usage from 1896, more generally from 1930. Since at least 1870, baseball teams would reissue tickets in case of postponement due to rain, which became known as rain checks.
Update: In fact, the latest update of iPhoto is using Helvetica Neue. And now there's Avenir, a Linotype typeface and Apple's new favorite. It was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988, inspired by two old school typefaces created in the 20s: Erbar by Jakob Erbar and Futura by Paul Renner.
Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with input from Eduard Hoffmann. It is a neo-grotesque or realist design, one influenced by the famous 19th century typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk and other German and Swiss designs.pple has used Helvetica as the system typeface of i OS, used for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Notably, from 1967 to 2013, the logo for American Airlines featured two upper case As (AA) and a wordmark using the font.