The Box - Marc Levinson [77]
The standards wars were by no means over. In fact, they had barely begun. At American urging, the International Standards Organization (ISO), which then had thirty-seven nations as members, agreed to study containers. At the time, only very small containers were being shipped across borders, but bigger ones obviously were on the way. The ISO project was meant to establish worldwide guidelines before firms made large financial commitments. Delegates from eleven countries, and observers from fifteen more, came to New York in September 1961 to start the process. Most were appointed by their governments, with the United States, represented by the American Standards Association, being an exception. The United States, as the convener of the meeting, held the chair.16
ISO’s practice, wherever possible, was to decide how a product must perform rather than how it should be made. This meant that ISO Technical Committee 104 (TC104) would focus on making containers easily interchangeable, not on the details of construction. TC104 was thus able to avoid prolonged debate between proponents of steel containers, popular in Europe, and advocates of the aluminum containers more common in America. No standard would dictate aluminum or steel. TC104 established three working groups and began what would inevitably be a slow-moving process, with many interests involved. The American Standards Association’s MH-5 subcommittees continued work on other domestic standards, with the hope that whatever they agreed would later be accepted by ISO. Many leading U.S. transport engineers were involved simultaneously in both groups.17
The wrangling over container sizes, which had consumed three years in the United States, was now repeated at the international level. By 1962, much of Europe was allowing larger vehicles than was America, so the new American standard sizes, 8 feet high, 8 feet wide, and 10, 20, 30, or 40 feet long, faced no technical obstacles. Economic interests were another story. Many continental European railroads owned fleets of much smaller containers, made for 8 or 10 cubic meters of freight rather than the 72.5 cubic meter volume of a 40-foot container. The Europeans wanted their containers recognized as standard. The British, Japanese, and North American delegations were all opposed, because the European containers were slightly wider than 8 feet. A compromise was struck in April 1963. Smaller containers, including the European railroad sizes and American 5-foot and -foot boxes, would be recognized as “Series 2” containers. In 1964, these smaller sizes, along with 10-, 20-, 30-, and 40-foot containers, were formally adopted as ISO standards. Not a single container owned by the two leading containership operators, Sea-Land Service (the former Pan-Atlantic) and Matson, conformed to the new “standard” dimensions.18
While one set of ISO subcommittees and task forces was hashing out dimensions, other groups of experts were seeking common ground concerning strength requirements and lifting standards. In both North America and Europe, small containers were often moved with forklifts, and some had eyes on the top through which longshoremen or railroad workers could insert hooks connected to winches. The larger containers introduced in North America had steel fittings at each corner, which were welded to the corner post, to a top or bottom rail running the length of the container, and to cross-members running across the front or back end. The corner fittings were cast with holes, through which the containers could be lifted, locked to a chassis, or connected to one another. These castings were simple to make, costing about five dollars apiece in 1961.19
The problem came with the lifting and locking devices that fit into the holes. Pan-Atlantic, the first out of the gate, had applied for a patent on its particular system, which used conical lugs that could slip through the oblong holes of its corner fittings and automatically lock into place; a double-headed device to hold two