The Death of Distance

In 1800, a letter from London to New York took three to six weeks by ship. By 1866, the transatlantic telegraph cable delivered messages in minutes. Today, data crosses oceans in milliseconds.

Each leap made geography feel less relevant to communication — or so it seemed.

Container shipping transformed trade in the 1960s. A standardized steel box made it nearly as cheap to ship goods 10,000 kilometers by sea as to truck them 100 kilometers by road.

Suddenly, a factory in China could supply a store in Kansas. Geography had not disappeared, but its cost had plummeted.