The book is a fascinating read: http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-Economy...

It chronicles competing standards, proprietary efforts, attempts at sea-rail-road integration, with some lively characters thrown in. It captures the entrepreneurial vibe of the heady postwar decades. I loved it.

Indeed, it'll teach you a lot about how the recent "modern" world developed; containers became important for the Vietnam War, but its mostly pure business and economic history, with sufficient detail---well, enough for me---on the technical side. Also the interplay of government laws and regulation, and shipping cartels, on the path this all took. And tells you why most of the historic ports of old faded away.

Absolutely fascinating.

Thanks for mentioning there's a BBC documentary. Here's a link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/business/2008/the_box/de...

That was a year long project by the BBC, where they fitted a container with a GPS and then followed it around the world.

But the also had a more traditional documentary called "The box that changed Britain":

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00scpzn

You can watch the first five minutes here:

http://vimeo.com/21395880

Also http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/07/07/the-epic-story-of-conta...