The passage experienced a surge in popularity during the 1960s when Letraset used it on their dry-transfer sheets, and again during the 90s as desktop publishers bundled the text with their software.

Lorem ipsum began as scrambled, nonsensical Latin derived from Cicero's 1st-century BC text De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum.

In particular, the garbled words of lorem ipsum bear an unmistakable resemblance to sections 1.10.32–33 of Cicero's work, with the most notable passage excerpted below

So far he hasn't relocated where he once saw the passage, but the popularity of Cicero in the 15th century supports the theory that the filler text has been used for centuries.