I don't know when that particular name for it dates to, but some sort of liberal arts requirement has been around for even longer. To be sure, if you take the minimum and take courses that aren't really liberal arts (e.g. accounting or microeconomics), it's fairly minimal. But the opportunity is certainly there to get a fairly broad education.
Feynman writes about having to satisfy a liberal arts requirement in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, so the requirement goes back at least to the late thirties.
It's been a while since I read it, but I seem to recall his approach to it was what I assume to be the normal MIT student's: take the minimum he could get away with and complain about how useless it was.
I could be misremembering, though, and that was written much later in his life.
