The box that changed the world
Global trade is what it is today thanks to a simple steel box. Shipping goods around the world was for many centuries expensive, risky and time-consuming. As Tim Harford explains, trucking entrepreneur Malcolm McLean changed all that by selling the idea of container shipping to the US military.
Against the odds 'containerisation' was transformed from an impractical idea into a huge industry, and one that decimated the cost of transporting goods around the world, creating a boom in global trade.
The world’s first container ship, a converted World War 2 tanker ‘Ideal X’ set sail from Newark to Houston in 1956, carrying 58 shipping containers. Today, modern vessels can carry over 20,000 containers.
In 1968 the International Standards Organisation standardised this invention as a standard box: 20 foot long, 8 foot high and 8 foot wide. The humble shipping container has therefore been the single biggest catalyst of globalisation
From the BBC: