h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This would be quite a large project I guess. I don't know if such a website/service exists already on the net. If H2 provided this source of information I would imagine it would get many hits.

What the entry would do is show years and amounts of money from the past and state what the amount would be in today's terms. (I'm not that knowledgeable on the matter but I gather that there is more than one way to convert amounts of money to the modern equivalent.)

The entry would show every year back to, say, 1800 and then every tenth year and then every fiftieth year etc. Ideally the entry would show how to convert the sum of £1 to its modern equivalent. Thus any amount would be easily convertible.

I believe I've seen a website that does that, but I've no idea where it is.

The Retail Price Index does some of that.

When I wanted to do this to explain something in a lesson to my students I put a question in Ask and was given a link to an American site. I wanted to find out what $10 in 1972 would be worth in ££s today. On the site I translated the $10 into todays money and then put the amount into the XE currency converter for the ££.

If I can find the conversation...

Here's the conversation:
F19585?thread=181190

My memory was faulty. It was $30 in 1970, which turned out to be about $139 in 2001, or £96.

Here are the links I was given.
The USA inflation calculator: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
Currency converter: http://www.xe.com/ucc/