集装箱的发明改变了世界

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It's not much to look at, a simple steel box with doors at one end, unremarkable, uninteresting. Yet this container and the tens of millions of others like it are responsible for a revolution, which affects virtually everyone on the entire planet.

If it wasn't for containerization, globalization wouldn't exist. It's as simple as that.

It began in 1956 with this man, Malcolm McLean, owner of a tracking firm in the US. McLean had an idea to put goods into containers onto a specially fitted container ship, the Ideal X. It would, he thought, be more efficient and more secure. What he didn't realize was that his idea would end a way of life for the shipping industry. No longer would longshoremen lift and place cargo inside a ship. That, some would say romantic, but nonetheless, expensive way of loading and unloading was changed forever…to this.

It took less than 20 years for containerization to sweep the four corners of the earth. It's estimated that now up to 90% of non-bulk cargo, which is grain, oil and gas, is shipped in containers. Its march was inevitable. There were huge savings to be made in just that every part of the industry. Bigger ships could be handled by fewer crew. Today's behemoths like these are sailed by between 20 and 40 people. They were faster from Asia to the US in 3 weeks. The time it took in port was slashed from days to just hours.

These ships now load and unload simultaneously. In the foreground, containers are being taken off, in the background they’re going on. One of these cranes can move almost 30 boxes about a thousand tons of goods an hour. And with the economies of scale come big savings. In the early 1960s, it was estimated that freight added on average between 12 and 25 percent to the cost of goods. Today freight costs are well under 5%.

The sheer volume of global trade has exploded. Containerization has spurred globalization. The factories of inland Malaysia can get their goods into the stores in the US within weeks, at a competitive price.

Where would it all end? The trend now is for bigger and bigger ships that will eventually be limited only by the size of the channels they have to sail through.

Andrew Stevens, cnn, Hong Kong.

Vocabulary:

1.       Behemoth: Something enormous in size or power.

2.       economies of scale: 规模经济