Often, materials discovered by accident alter the course of the world. In the s Dutch commercial freighters controlled Atlantic trade routes. Competing British lines induced America to produce pitch to protect hulls of their royal vessels.
This arrangement lasted until , after which a Scottish inventor tried to produce pitch from coal tar. By the time he succeeded the navy was using copper instead. Subsequent experiments with coal tar yielded gaslight lamps, waterproofed garments, a brilliant mauve dye that established the German chemical industry and nylon, the first of the miracle plastics.
This giant metal box is one of the reasons why the modern world changes as fast as it does. Because of this, people living in Lima or Birmingham or Chicago or anywhere can as easily all have the same Japanese model calculator, dress in French fashions, use a telephone system designed and built in Germany, get emergency medical equipment when they need it, and eat fresh strawberries in the winter.
And they can do all that because you can put one hundred tons of anything into this metal box. Anything from helicopters to hair dryers. I mean, with one of these you can deliver the guts of an entire factory in one day, and come back the next day with another factory.
High technology door to door. And what, for instance, is that going to do to the developing countries, and to their relationship with us? This is not the first time a new kind of transport has changed things.
