Author of The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

On this, the 50th anniversary of container shipping, explain the significance of that first refitted oil tanker carrying 58 container boxes from Newark, N.J., to Houston.

Before the container, freight was very expensive. Every item had to be handled separately each time it was put on a ship or truck. Shipping goods internationally often cost 20 percent or 30 percent of the products' value. Items were damaged frequently or stolen. Because of cost, many things weren't even traded internationally. Containerization brought a huge drop in shipping costs, enough that transportation stopped being a major consideration in deciding where to make most products.

How did industry agree on a single container design?

Early on, there were many varieties of containers. Some were 35 feet long, some 24 feet, some 17 feet. There were different ways of getting them on and off ships, trucks and trains. People recognized containerization would not succeed without a standard container that could go anywhere. It took 10 years of negotiations, domestically and then internationally, before the familiar 40-foot container was established as the standard. If you can imagine spending 10 years bargaining over the strength of container end walls, that's the sort of thing that went on. But when the process was finished, you could fill a container in Thailand and ship it to Salt Lake City and not worry it might get stuck at a dock in Oakland because the port's cranes were a different size.

What did the Vietnam War have to do with containerization?

In the first decade of containerization, container shipping was confined to the U.S. coasts, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Alaska. People said it would never work internationally. But in 1965, the U.S. started its big troop buildup in Vietnam. The military shipped huge amounts of supplies to Vietnam, which had only one major port. The whole thing turned into a logistical mess. Ships waited weeks to unload. When finally unloaded, goods piled up on the docks because there was no easy way to get them to field troops. Malcolm McLean, whose company first operated containerships in 1956, persuaded the Pentagon to try containers. McLean's company, Sea-Land, built a port for containers at Cam Ranh Bay and started carrying containers to Vietnam in 1967. The military sent a lot of stuff to Vietnam, but did not have much to send back. So McLean looked for something to do with empty ships heading to the West Coast. He decided to stop in Japan. By the fall of 1968, Sea-Land was sailing from Japan to the West Coast six times a month, carrying stereos, televisions and that sort of thing.

What factors contributed to container shipping causing global economic changes?

Consider high transport costs as a sort of trade barrier, just like a high import tariff. As transport costs declined, that barrier came down, totally changing the pattern of world trade. That's been great for consumers. It's been great for economic growth overall. It hasn't been great for people in the U.S. and other countries who make goods that compete with imports. Toy makers, apparel manufacturers and small appliance assemblers pretty much folded up in Europe, Japan, the U.S. and Canada. Think about it this way: Macy's in New York is in the middle of what used to be the Garment District, where thousands of people sewed clothes. The container enabled Macy's to get clothing from Asia cheaper than it could from factories two blocks away.

- Dawn House