Although most cargo moves over the ocean, various factors have fueled the swift expansion of air freight since World War II. For example, the postwar push to open global markets decreased the cost of air freight and increased its viability. By the mid- 1960s, the...
The advent of the container engendered many things. One was rampant resistance. Various attempts were made to thwart the spread of the container, or the “longshoreman’s coffin” as it was called. This is because in free-market terms, technological innovations like the container produce threats—particularly to workers...
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....
A sentimental look at american decline and its affect on one of america's great cities. Has America outsourced its future? What is to become of our children raised in the ruins of the rust belt and other moldering hubs of former production?...
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...
http://youtu.be/eur8rYBotxg...
First Containership, Ideal-X, 1956 On April 26th 1956, the Ideal-X left the Port of Newark, New Jersey to the Port Houston, Texas, which it called 5 days later. It carried 58 35-feet (8 feet wide by 8 feet high) containers, along with a regular load of...
Until the 1950s, the ocean transport of general cargo generally relied on the very slow, labor intensive and expensive break-bulk method. Frustrated with this process, a young U.S. trucking entrepreneur, Malcolm McLean, decided to carry loaded trailer trucks directly onto ships. The container age began...