How to use the chart, third set of examples:
This index will allow you to estimate the cost of any item
in the dollars of any year included in the index.
Example: You know the cost of an item in 1900 was $1, and
you want to know the cost it would have had in 1989 dollar
figures [i.e. "adjusting for inflation"].
First go to the base year of 1900, in which 1.000000 is an
estimated base for the year 1900.
Then look for the 1989 figure in the 1900 table:
1989 18.000607 0.055554
This indicates that the item costing $1 in 1900 would cost
approximately $18 in 1989.
The second column is the inverse function, meaning an item
costing $1 in 1989 would have cost about $.05 or $.06 back
in the year 1900.
You should be able to find some interesting trends such as
that prices were falling back in 1875 as industrial growth
swept the United States and the West was being developed.
[Based on an item costing $67 in 1875 {$1,000 in 1989}]
Prices fell from $67 to $47 from 1875 to 1898, in a rather
steady progression, and then rather steadily rose back for
the next two decades until World War I, until they reached
$67 again in 1913 and $69 in 1914, which were the last two
years of moderate inflation until after 1919, when pricing
dropped from a high of $139 after doubling since 1914.
Prices stabilized during the rest of the 1920's about $110
until 1930, and the Great Depression, in which prices fell
to $88 in 1933 and then back to the ranges of the 1920's--
until around the end of World War II, when prices went out
of control, rising from an average of around $120 for WWII
on the whole to $200 in 1951. It took 17 years to hit the
$300 level in 1968 and 22 years to double to $400 in 1973.
From 1973 it took only 9 years to double again to $800 for
the year 1982.
[At 7% per year, it takes 10 years for inflation to cut $1
to $.05, at 1% it takes 70 years, at 3% it is 23 years and
at 4% it takes about 18 years]. Based on 4% inflation, it
will be
1990 1.040000 [based on 1989 as 1.000000 base year]
1991 1.081600 [and based on 4.0000% inflation rate]
1992 1.124864
1993 1.169856
which would be an 11 year span for prices to double, since
they were at 0.793652 in 1982 to 1.169856, projected 1993]
Below are files for every year on this chart independently listed
with that year as the base year, so you can look up for instance,
what something from 1930 would have cost in 1950, or the reverse.