OxBlog

# Posted 5:02 AM by Patrick Belton

COOL NEW SITE: If you're like me - or even if you're not really that much like me - you probably often run across monetary amounts from other decades and centuries, and are never quite sure how to convert, say, £500 from 1975 into 2002 money, to say nothing of the £63,176 it cost to construct the HMS Victory in 1765, or the two shillings which you may be fined at Yale for going 'to a Gunning, Fishing or Sailing ... any Court, Election, Town-Meeting, Wedding, or Meeting...which may Occasion Mispence of precious Time without Liberty first obtain'd from the President or his Tutor' (1745 rulebook). Well, a really delightful new site run by Economic History.Net now lets you convert the purchasing power of sterling for any years in between 1264 and 2002 - your 1975 five-hundred quid, for instance, equate to a whopping £2,577.60 in 2002; or £41, 6s, 2d in 1900; or £65, 3s, 9d in 1800 (yes, the pound actually rose in value over the nineteenth century); £7, 0s, 11d at the accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth; or even £3, 8s, 10d in 1264, the year of the Battle of Lewes and eight years after Simon de Montfort called the first Parliament at Oxford.

Other sites on EH.Net let you do similar calculations for the U.S. dollar, compare the value of unskilled labour across centuries, and compare the UK consumer price index, and average nominal and real earnings, from 1264 to 2002.

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