Shipping containers shrink the globe

SYDNEY — The relentless pursuit of technological advancement since World War II has given the global community inventions like personal computers and mobile phones.

A lot of thought has been given to the individual commodities that enrich the modern world, but much less is afforded to the simple invention that made it all accessible.

That’s why a new exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney is highlighting how shipping containers have helped change people’s lives.

Before 1956, all cargo was transported via bulk shipping, a tedious, painstaking process that involved loading and unloading a range of oddly shaped bales, bundles and crates.

While watching scores of workers unload an army of trucks as he waited for hours at the port of Newark, New Jersey in 1937, 24-year-old truck driver Malcom McLean came up with the idea for a universally sized, stackable box that did not need to be unpacked,

At the age of 40, McLean borrowed money from Citibank and in 1956 his first container ship, the Ideal X, sailed from Newark to Europe with 58 containers on board.

For an individual truck, the new system would save the driver around one whole day each time they would arrive at port to unload, but overall the ship’s workers would save more than one week on each end of the voyage.

The simple invention meant ports could increase exports exponentially at a rate that was completely unimaginable just years ago.

“Containers have this really special role in our lives that not many people know about,” said Dr Mary-Elizabeth Andrews, curator at the Australian National Maritime Museum.

“Shipping is the global driver in terms of the way you and I and millions of others live our everyday lives.

“Without the container we just wouldn’t have the phones that we use every day, we wouldn’t have our widescreen televisions, we wouldn’t have access to cheap fashion, cheap furniture or the kind of level of lifestyle that we’re used to.”

Once dominated by Europe and the United States, the world’s leading seafarer is now China, after overtaking the US back in the early 2000s.