Absolutely. We live in a 325 sq. ft. apartment and there are no less than 200 bound books in our home. I would wager that less than 1% were printed on a photocopier.
So yes. I see a lot of books printed with real type. Wooden movable type? Doubtful. Metal? Yep.
In the 1920s, French manicurist Michelle Monard modified the formula for automotive paint to create opaque colored nail polish (or “nail lacquer”). Her employer took that idea and ran with it to create modern cosmetics giant Revlon.
AFAICT the global nail lacquer industry has annual revenues on the order of US$10 billion. As far as ubiquity goes, the product is probably well up there with aluminum drinks cans and Phillips-head screws.
Modern printing transfers an entire page to a cylinder. They haven’t used movable type since the seventies.
Actually, it was the knife invented by Ginsuk the caveman.
Actually, Ginsuk called it an “oog”. But then Froog stabbed him with his oog and said to everyone he invented it, and it was called a “knife”. Apparently everyone else took his word for it.
Does Internet porn qualify as a ubiquitous object?
Which seventies? My understanding is that movable type was mostly replaced by Linotype and other hot metal processes by the early 20th century.
Are you going to tell us which individual “invented” it?
In any case, it may be ubiquitous to you, but it wouldn’t have been to my mother. (Even if she had been interested, she never could learn how to use a computer.)
I’ll take that as a no.
Interesting, but who the hell came up with the idea of studying bread clips? 
I am holding proof in my hand that this is untrue. In 1974 my father retired from his career as a newspaperman. He was the Science Editor for a large metropolitan newspaper in the United States.
Every page was set with metal type. From the initial set pages, a thick plastic positive was molded for EVERY page for proofreading and checking of photographs- which appeared in the plastic as half-tone images.
A barrel sheet was then prepared and used to print the newspaper.
I have his byline in my hands. Because he was staff, they had cast his byline as a single piece of lead, but every letter piece was identifiable along the edges and underside.
They had zero interest in faking his byline for a gift or gag. This is how at least some newspapers prepared their pages in the early 1970’s.
See post #71 for disproof.
The three-point seatbelt was designed by Nils Bohlin at Volvo, and is currently used in an estimated 7 billion cars around the world. Since the majority of cars have more than one seatbelt, that should put the total number of seatbelts around 15-20 billion or so.
There are more canned fruit and drinks cans in each supermarket than all the cars in that city.
Gutenberg didn’t invent the book, though. He invented movable type. You don’t have any of that in your apartment, unless you have a very odd collecting hobby. Books are ubiquitous, but movable type is an object most people have never laid eyes on.
How many cans is that? First Google result for “how many cars in Chicago” says 3,456,125.
I’ll toss out another idea: The Monobloc Chair. Roughly 1 billion sold in Europe alone, and described as having achieved “cultural global ubiquity”.
Apparently based on an original design by D.C. Simpson.
First thing I thought of, those plastic chairs can be found everywhere.
Pringles? Or at least the Pringles can. I once spoke with an international photojournalist who told me, “I’ve been to deepest, darkest Africa, and they’ve got Pringles.”
His name was Ooga Magoog, of Natchez, MS.* Allan Sherman graciously provided consultant services.**
*(some scholars place his residence in Louisiana, but his family ties in Mobile, AL suggest otherwise)
** conveniently provided for your . . . convenience: