Product Code Database
A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term is most frequently applied to devices made from materials that are Durable good and are often partly or completely Stiffness.
A container can also be considered as a basic tool,David P. Braun, "Pots as Tools", in J. A. Moore and A. S. Keene, eds., Archaeological Hammers and Theories (1983), pp. 108–134.Karen Gayle Harry, Stephanie Michelle Whittlesey, Trixi Bubemyre, Pots, Potters, And Models: Archaeological Investigations at the SRI Locus of the West Branch Site, Tucson, Arizona (2005), p. 283: "The perspective taken in this chapter is that ceramic containers are tools (Braun 1983) and, as a crucial part of the technological repertoire, can provide considerable information about activity organization, production technology, food-preparation and storage technology, settlement function, and economic organization". consisting of any device creating a partially or fully enclosed space that can be used to contain, store, and transport objects or materials.
Containers thereafter continued to develop along with related advances in human technology, and with the development of new materials and new means of manufacture. Early glass bottles were produced by the ; specimens of Phoenician translucent and transparent glass bottles have been found in Cyprus and Rhodes generally varying in length from three to six inches.Perrot and Chipiez, Histoire de l'art, v iii, 734–744. These Phoenician examples from the first millennium Before Christ were thought to have been used to contain perfume.George Rawlinson, History of Phoenicia, 1889, Green Longmans publisher, 583 pages The Ancient Rome learned glass-making from the Phoenicians and produced many extant examples of fine glass bottles, mostly relatively small. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, sizes for retail containers such as glass bottles had become standardized for their markets.Warren Belasco, Roger Horowitz, Food Chains: From Farmyard to Shopping Cart, pp. 98–99.
In 1810, Frenchman Philippe de Girard came to London and used British merchant Peter Durand as an agent to patent his own idea for a process for making . The canning concept was based on experimental food preservation work in glass containers the year before by the French inventor Nicholas Appert. Durand did not pursue food canning, but, in 1812, sold his patent to two Englishmen, Bryan Donkin and John Hall, who refined the process and product, and set up the world's first commercial canning factory on Southwark Park Road, London. By 1813 they were producing their first tin canned goods for the Royal Navy.
For transportation of goods on a larger scale, larger containers remained a problem, as customs officials inspecting imports had to deal with a lack of standardization in this field, and because predominantly wooden containers in use well into the twentieth century were prone to leaking or breaking. The standardized steel shipping container was developed in the 1950s, and quickly became ubiquitous for the large-scale transportation of commercial goods.
Towards the end of the Twentieth century, the introduction of computer-aided design made it possible to design highly specialized containers and container arrangements, and also to make form-fitting labels for containers of unusual shapes.Geoff A. Giles, Design and Technology of Packaging Decoration for the Consumer Market (2000), p. 82: "Container designers also found that shrink sleeves gave them new-found freedom to design containers that until then had been viewed as impossible to decorate".
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