Future archivists will duly note that very early on the morning of June 18, 1976, the sun rose as usual and cast its slanting rays westward over the natural and man -made details of Anzio, Italy.
Approximately 24 hours later, as it started to set out over the Pacific horizon, the sun's rays slanted eastward over the natural and man -made details of our long western coastline, thereby completing its 18 ,263rd consecutive passage over, among much else, the well -dispersed facilities of Container Corporation of America.
On that particular day, those facilities numbered 150 and were located in seven countries in two hemispheres.
The point of this record is that this precise succession of passages by the sun added up to our first 50 years as a corporate entity.
We were not always so widely dispersed.
Back in 1926, with home base in Chicago and our easternmost point in Philadelphia, just two time zones could well accommodate the 14 mills and plants that made up our original corporate package, so much for geographic scale.
Among the changes and effects of change that the sun illuminated in our first half century was America's expanding urbanization, one of the results of which was to increase the logistical gap between producer and consumer.
In consequence, the produce of our fields and gardens, no less than the output of our mills and factories, had to be transported farther, faster, and to more people than ever before.
This process of change was already underway in 1926, a time when America's love affair with the automobile was well along, but a time also when farm wagons were still sold through the catalogs of Montgomery Ward.
The consuming and somewhat brash ambition of our young corporate forebears was to make board packaging the link that would more efficiently close the widening gap between producers and consumers.
Their goal was to concentrate paperboard's advantages on making packaging not only more responsive to changes already in progress, but also capable of anticipating the problems and opportunities that continuing distribution developments would bring.
They assumed that their biggest problem would be to convince shippers that paperboard packaging could be entrusted with the distribution and related tasks, then being performed predominantly by wooden containers.
And that did indeed take some doing, especially in the early days.
But with the help of other industry pioneers, containers first generation proceeded to meet the day -to -day challenges of proving that paperboard was a more versatile, less costly packaging material than wood could ever be, and that paperboard's expanding application would make a broader range of products available to consumers than ever before.
Given these advantages, it seems natural enough, in retrospect, that paperboard would be the packaging material of the future.
So much for mismatched competitors.
All kinds of technology, including paperboard technology, have come a long way in our first half century, but paperboard is as contemporary today as the computer.
In fact, the computer helped shape the precision and variety of paperboard's performance -intensive capabilities.
Ask us to define paperboard, and we would say that paperboard is paper with muscle, incorporating all the inherent communication capacities of paper, so long and so well regarded for these properties, with the addition of strength and resistance qualities required for versatile, practical, economical product packaging and distribution.
Paperboard is also light in weight, variable in structure, and is limitless in innovative application as creative imagination is limitless.
There is an additional important advantage.
Paper and paperboard share a regenerative process, unique in contemporary technology, a process that reduces a natural solid, wood, to its tiny basic fibrous components, which in a 98 % water solution are then reformed during a very fast trip through the paperboard machine into an entirely different solid state, embodying a vast new range of capabilities.
Fortunately, in view of increasing ecological and related concerns, there is a valuable extra dimension to this regenerative capability.
After virtually any of its numerous application options, paper and paperboard can be recycled, reduced again to their fibrous components, remixed with water and other chemicals, and remade into another generation of useful material, conserving and expanding valuable natural growth.
So the solid to liquid to solid cycle goes on and on, with only minimal additives and modifications.
So much for an old process, ingeniously updated.
What the creatively inspired can do with a material so well endowed with potential for constructive expression can be easily demonstrated with a lot of creative helpers.
Take a roll of newly formed paperboard, unroll a hundred feet or so, and try to visualize the sheer volume of utility, convenience, and communication potential you have laid out, appropriately enough, right on the piney woods floor.
Of course, it would probably never happen, but try to imagine how a passing troop of schoolchildren would react to all that smooth, responsive surface.
My oh my, how they would draw, and print, and color.
How they would cut, and fold, and form, and even fly.
How they would, in a word, create with and on that roll of paperboard.
In our first half century, we have found that a lot of grownup children respond the same way, and with training to augment their natural talents and feelings for the medium, they also draw, and print, and color.
And sometimes even fly.
Better yet, they translate their applied imagery to the reproduction processes that can expand their artistry a million fold.
Other talented grownups monitor scoring, cutting, and folding actions, so that further down the line, still others can fill, seal, move, store, display, and attract.
With these things properly accounted for, the all -important consumer enters the equation, and suitably appealed to, selects the packaged product, makes the purchase, takes the package home, dispenses the product, and recycles the package, thereby starting the whole regenerative process all over again.
In our first half century, we have learned a lot about the care and feeding of paperboard's range of potentials, how to let it inform, how to let it accommodate, how to let it use its muscle where it really counts.
Structural design is the key to paperboard packaging function, and structure is as variable as product needs are variable.
Fragility and ruggedness are equally packageable in paperboard, as are lightness and density, small and large, liquid, solid, and in between.
Also in our first half century, automation of the production line had to be matched by automation on the packaging line.
Consequently, we are now in our second generation of mechanical packaging specialists.
Their activities assure packaging performance on the producer's home grounds to match subsequent distribution and marketing performance.
With structural and automation performance capabilities assured, the visual dimensions of package design can add their valuable supports by communicating product identity, origin, and pertinent related information to serve both the producer's responsibilities and the consumer's well -being.
But even when we have determined that a specific packaging solution is performance capable in its own terms, we don't recommend the production commitment until we find out how it will be perceived and therefore accepted or rejected by its ultimate target user, the consumer.
It is easier to make these determinations today because early in our first half century, we pioneered the integration of scientific marketing procedures with design operations through our design and market research laboratories.
We should note some other pertinent lessons of our first half century.
One, the fact that as superior as paperboard packaging proved to be, it cannot do everything better.
That's why we added plastics packaging to our design and production capabilities.
The Plastics Division of Container Corporation pioneered the development of the plastic drum, which is unapproachable in its ability to safely transport and store a broad range of essential substances, including the most hazardous chemicals in use today.
On quite a different scale, another lesson learned was the mutual benefits of a selective joining of forces.
In 1968, Container Corporation entered into a merger with Montgomery Ward to form MarCore.
As predicted by our management, this merger produced improved strength and MarCore's continuing high performance attracted a major investment by Mobile Oil Corporation in 1974 to implement that organization's own diversification objectives.
As of early July 1976, the complete merger of MarCore into a newly formed holding company, Mobile Corporation, made Container Corporation a major element of the nation's third largest business enterprise.
In the broadest terms, this just about summarizes who we are and what we are about at this point in our continuum.
We have deliberately resisted the urge to show you even more of the treasured snapshots from our corporate archives, but we will point out a few examples of our advertising in the mid -1930s, not because they suggest nostalgia, but because they don't.
The point is that our advertising of four decades back, when we were barely ten years old, could be run today without really suggesting times long past.
And the significance of that is the historical fact that Container was the first organization to assign advertising and corporate design programs to artists and designers of international stature.
Artists and designers whose work has worn very well.
That direction, initiated by Walter P.
Pepke, our founder and first chief executive officer, put us firmly on the leading edge of the communication arts, a position we will work to maintain and build on in the decades ahead.
Finally, we should note that it is those decades ahead that we wish to emphasize here.
In our first half century, our goal was to help packaging become an increasingly valuable contributor to the industrial society.
And this is a continuing goal.
But in our second half century, we share a far more serious responsibility.
Packaging must do its part in helping the whole world meet the critical challenges posed by ever -expanding demands on diminishing resources.
That, too, is our continuing goal.
Thank you.
