Originally posted by Mithalwen:
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I stand corrected - it was in use when I was there but it is quite a long time ago.
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It is a fairly recent thing.
I believe that much of Tom Bombadil's wacky personality was already established when Tolkien wrote "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil." I don't have "Letters," so I can't really comment on Tolkien's explanation, but I believe he does say something about the hobbits "needing an adventure" before they reached Bree, or something like that. He chose to insert Bombadil at this point as an enigma, something unexplained. He appears in the story at a point where, I believe, some "strangeness" is needed to underscore the transition from the relatively mundane world of the nice, safe Shire into the wider, more dangerous and unpredictable world of All Middle-Earth.
As for Tom being asked to take the Ring to keep it safe, Gandalf's opinion was probably right. It certainly would have made for a very different story if the Council of Elrond had chosen this as a course of action.