Sixty years ago, we had no shipping containers, no Satellite Communications, and no packet switching. That means no standardized shipping, no RFID or cell phone calls to remote locations where landlines are unreliable (because thieves are digging up the copper) or non-existent, and no way of tracking your shipments and status with internet and web-based software.

But all that changed in the 50’s. We had the U.S. Military begin standardization of the intermodal shipping container, which was formally standardized by the ISO in the late 1960s, packet switching research began in the early 1960s, which resulted in NPL and ARPANET, the latter evolving into the internet, and 54 years ago today, ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency) launched the world’s first communications satellite, SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment).

And less than 60 years later we have the modern supply chain. It’s too bad that we didn’t have blogs 60 years ago, because it would be very interesting to go back through the digital archives and relive the New Florence. New Renaissance. that followed WWII. At the time, with the limits of communication technology, the rate of innovation between 1945 and 1969 was quite phenomenal. The current Renaissance didn’t really start until the introduction of the Web 20 years later (in 1989). Something to think about before the world begins again in 3 days. 🙂