The political showdown over a Dubai company’s plan to operate terminals at six American ports briefly focus public attention on one of the most significant, yet least noticed, economic developments of the last few decades: the transformation of international shipping.

　　Just as the computer revolutionized the flow of information, the shipping container revolutionized the flow of goods. By sharply cutting cost and enhancing reliability, container-based shopping enormously increased the volume of international trade and made complex supply chains possible.

　　“Low transport costs help make it economically sensible for a factory in China to produce Barbie dolls with Japanese colorants, and ship them to eager girls all over the world,” writes Marc Levinson in the new book “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.”

　　For consumers, this results in lower prices and more variety. “People now just take it for granted that they have access to an enormous selection of goods from all over the world,” Mr. Levinson said. The selection, he said, “was made possible by the technological change.”

　　When the first container ship set sail 50 years ago, businesses and regulators treated distribution not as a single process but as a series of distinct modes: ships, trucks and train. Every time the transportation mode changed, somebody had to transfer physically every box or barrel.

　　“By far the biggest expense in the process was shifting the cargo from land transport to ship at the port of departure and moving it back to truck or train at the other end of the ocean voyage,” writes Mr. Levinson. This “breaking bulk” could easily consume half of the total cost of shipping.

　　Goods often had to wait in warehouses for the next stage. Those transfers and delays made shipping slow and schedules uncertain. They also created opportunities for damage, mistakes and more than a little theft. (Whiskey was one of the first products shipped by container because it was so subject to pilferage.) Different companies in different industries facing different price regulations for different goods handled each step.

　　Today, by contrast, “you can call one of the big international ship lines, tell them to pick up your container in Bangkok, which is not a port, and tell them to deliver it in Dallas, which is not a port, and they will make the arrangements to get it to a port and get it off at another port and get into a train or truck and get it where it needs to be,” Mr. Levinson said.
For that, shipper can thank a visionary North Carolina trucking entrepreneur. Malcom Mclean, founder of the company that became Sea-Land Service, though not like a seaman but like a salesman.

　　“His big insight was that the customer doesn’t care how you’re shipping the goods,” Mr. Levinson said. “The customer wants to get it from here to there cheap and on time. The customer doesn’t care if it goes by air or land or sea.”

　　The idea of containerization was simple: to move trailer-size loads of goods seamlessly among trucks, trains and ships, without breaking bulk. But turning that idea into real-life business practice required many additional innovations.

　　New equipment, from dockside cranes to the containers themselves, had to be developed. Carriers and shippers had to settle on standard container sizes. Ports had to strengthen their wharves, create connection to rail lines and highways, build place to store containers and strike new deals with their unions.

　　Mr. Levinson’s story helps explain why port operators like the Dubai-owned company DP World have become so important. In the container age, any city with good port facilities, including feeder rail and truck lines, can compete with any place in the same large region.

　　Along the way, even the more foresighted people made mistakes and lost millions. “Almost everybody who was concerned with containerization in any way at some point got the story wrong,” Mr. Levinson said.