The lowly, inelegant container has been the key to a revolution that continues to shape the everyday lives of nearly everyone in the world.

There is, let it be said, nothing remotely sexy about a shipping container. Six sheets of steel welded into a box with boards for a floor and a couple of doors at one end: transportation equipment doesn’t get any more basic. Yet since the first modern container voyage in April 1956, the container has helped transform the world economy. By dramatically lowering the cost of shipping goods, the container made possible a vast expansion of international trade. It destroyed the economies of ports from Liverpool to Brooklyn and gave rise to entirely new ones. It eliminated millions of jobs on the waterfront and reshaped the very nature of manufacturing. It enabled China to emerge as a world power. Without the container, there would be no globalisation.

Source: https://worksthatwork.com/2/intermodal-container