Stanley Morison, Printing the Times, 1783–1953:

A cutting of the 4¾-point of The Times New Roman design, nicknamed ‘Claritas,’ was brought into commission on June 18, 1951, and is still to be seen. It was employed for the front page, for the back-page estate advertisements, for the Stock Exchange prices, and for certain news items such as ecclesiastical and university intelligence and sports results. The size was at once recognised as a triumph of type-founding. So small a size had not hitherto been part of the typographical stock of the trade. A legible 4¾-point size apt for mechanical composition at speed is a permanent contribution to the art. And this must be claimed, even when, as is the case, the comfort of older readers of the paper requires that, as soon as possible, the larger size (5¼-point) is restored. A start has been made. The cutting of this ‘Claritas’ size remains as the final absolute test of the principles upon which The Times New Roman had originally been engraved twenty years before. As its adoption for the classified pages of the Manchester Guardian and the Evening News (London) proves, the ‘Claritas’ size, somewhat rounder than the 7, 7½ and 9-point used for the main text of The Times, is a design that proves the technical capacity of British industrial typography to be the highest in the world. Thus, after twenty-one years of use of the new roman it had designed for itself The Times had made no change but that of size.