The steamship put new life into global production and trade and transfigured all facets of global society. Steam power was an integral aspect of the Industrial Revolution and the nineteenth century that embodied it. Unlike muscle power, it never tired, slept, or refused to obey....
For most of human history, both the speed and efficiency of transportation were staggeringly low, and the costs of overcoming the friction of distance were exorbitantly high. Even as late as the nineteenth century, the means of transportation were not greatly different from those prevailing...
Before the container was globally accepted, freight costs were so high that international trade was often not practical. The maiden voyage of the Ideal X and the crossing of the first international container ship, The American Racer, to Europe ten years later changed all that....
At the time of the Ideal X voyage, no one could have predicted the degree to which this uniform steel box would become such a dramatic agent of global change. The container, like the Internet, is the key to a fundamental global network. The Internet revolution connects people across...