BBC Box

For the BBC blocks logo, see Logo of the BBC.

The Box outside BBC Television Centre, London in November 2009.

The Box or BBC Box (BIC code: NYKU8210506) was a single ISO intermodal container which was tracked by BBC News between September 2008 and April 2009, as part of a project to study international trade and globalisation.[1] The Box was fitted with tracking equipment, and painted in a special one-off BBC livery.[2]

The Box was named after the book The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, which covers the effects of containerisation.[1] The project was assisted by the Container Shipping Information Service.

The tracking project was launched on 8 September 2008.[1] The BBC project tracked a standard 40-foot-long (12.19 m) shipping container as it was transported by its owner, Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) shipping line using intermodal freight transport with various cargoes. An on-board GPS unit tracked the Box's location, and this was used to update a map showing the current location and its previous route. If the container's GPS or communications signal was obstructed (such as having been stacked too far inside the ship's hold), the ship's own GPS location was used to manually update a map.[3] The tracking unit suffered technical problems during December 2008.[4]

Following the end of the project in 2009, the shipping container was donated by its owner, Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) to a charity to be turned into a soup kitchen.[5]

  1. ^ a b c Hillman, Jeremy (8 September 2008). "The Box takes off on global journey". news.bbc.co.uk. BBC News. Archived from the original on 8 September 2008. Retrieved 8 September 2008.
  2. ^ "Special Reports | The Box". news.bbc.co.uk. BBC News. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  3. ^ "Follow the BBC container". Royal Institute of Navigation. Archived from the original on 24 October 2008. Retrieved 22 October 2008.
  4. ^ "The Box: latest location". news.bbc.co.uk. BBC News. 2 November 2009. Archived from the original on 17 December 2008. Retrieved 11 December 2008. Unfortunately, owing to some fiendish technical problems with the Box's GPS unit, this map will not update until mid December when repairs can be made.
  5. ^ "Lessons learned as the Box returns". news.bbc.co.uk. BBC News. 4 November 2009. Retrieved 8 February 2020.