Some early contenders for that first cheek copy could be the inventor of the photocopy, Chester Carlton, or the guys at Xerox who developed its first commercial counterpart.

The Xerox 914 was a gigantic device weighing 650 pounds - the flatbed scanner on its top would have been more than easy to climb onto, so it’s hard to imagine that no one would sit on it for more than 20 years, just like it’s hard to imagine that those cavemen who discovered fire didn’t soon start lighting their farts. More than likely it was the latter scenario, since no single name can be decisively linked to this action before 1980, while the first modern commercial copying machine appeared in 1959. Or it could have originated like the discovery of fire, where no single human can lay claim to it, but instead, was discovered multiple times in different parts of the world. Unfortunately, we don’t know definitively who the first person to photocopy their posterior was, but it had to have originated one of two ways: It could be that there was a sole genius progenitor who first pressed his bare bum against the glass, and from there, this monumental breakthrough spread from place to place, much like Victor Fleming’s discovery of penicillin.

Also, though he personally denies this, he may be one of the first people in history to photocopy his ass (more on this later). Having been a Peabody Award–winning journalist and a war correspondent during the Vietnam War, Ron Nessen would become the 13th press secretary of our country, from 1974 to 1977.

Butt photocopy