Price/Cost Indexes from 1875 to 1989; Estimated to 2010

Price/Cost Indexes from 1875 to 1929
United States
October, 1993 expanded for release in November, 1993
THE RATE OF CHANGE OF THE RATE OF CHANGE by Michael S. Hart
In The Electronic Journal of Virtual Culture]
Many of you are aware that the $3,000 you spent on computers last year could be replaced by $2,000 spent today. However, only recently have I actually purchased computer gear that I bought with dollars that were only half as valuable as those with which one of my drives was purchased in 1979.
Many of you are aware that the average personal computer was $5,000 - $10,000 some 10 - 15 years ago when Apples and IBMs first appeared on the scene, but you might not be aware of a trend beyond the price reduction that makes today's computer prices an even better bargain in comparison.
In fact, computers today are TWICE as good a bargain as they appear in comparisons with those early computers, and it was already looking as if they were bargains beyond all belief.
Here are a few examples to jog your memory:
These are bare bones prices for the computer systems; when filled out with color monitors, printers, ports, modems, and the rest of an average computer system, these prices usually doubled, and the prices I usually quote as modern comparison figures include VGA, printer, modem, mouse, and software.
1979 Konan 5M External Hard Drive Kit for Apples $3,000 1981 PC-DOS CP/M 1-Floppy 128K-RAM serial-parallel $2,000 1983 PC-XT added 3 slots and 10M hard drive $3,600 1983 PC to XT Upgrade kit with 5M ST-506 Hard Drive $1,500 1984 PC-AT 1.2M Floppy 256K-RAM no ports 3x faster $4,000 1984 PC-AT Enhanced added 20M hard drive no ports $5,800
The two points I want to make here are that for the cheapest of these machine prices back then, you can now get a machine that is 100 times faster with 100 times the disk space: and that the same is true for the most expensive AND that prices today are actually half what they appear to be in comparison to the prices listed above.