On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 7:10 PM, Fred Jensen <k6...@foothill.net> wrote:
> ...I don't know what a 1977 dollar would be worth today... Well, the CPI as reported by the St. Louis Federal Reserve was 224.43 at April 1, 2011, the most recent point; at April 1, 1977 it was 60.00. So if something cost $1 then and its price rose exactly in line with the CPI, it would cost $3.74 today. This sez that today's $3000 transceiver would have sold for $802 in 1977 dollars. In fact, as Fred's email points out, a nice S-line setup sold for many times that, an illustration of how the real prices of technology goods have come down over time. A 4-channel radio-control tranmitter sold for about $400 in those days, the equivalent of about 1500 bucks now -- but in fact you can go down to the hobby shop and buy one for less than $100. And of course so much of today's technology goods wouldn't have been available at any price. In 1977 I bought a Tektronix desktop computer for about $4000, the equivalent of nearly 15,000 of today's dollars. It had 16K of RAM, ran Basic programs that could only be a max of about 150 lines long, and stored programs on an internal cassette drive -- no data storage. Those of us who like hi-tech toys are able to indulge ourselves now more than ever. 73, Tony KT0NY ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html