By — Paul Solman Paul Solman Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/tool-tuesday-currency-conversion-and-haydns-messiah Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Tool$ Tuesday: Currency Conversion and Haydn’s Messiah Arts Feb 8, 2011 11:47 AM EDT Paul Solman answers questions from NewsHour viewers and web users on business and economic news most days on his Making Sen$e page. Here’s Tuesday’s query: Name: Roland Weiser Question: I would appreciate the name of the site where you can obtain today’s value for currency in the past. I’m writing a family memoir: my father worked in Cairo, Egypt as a pharmacist in 1906 and was paid LE 18 [Egyptian Pounds] per month. How much would that be in today’s dollar value? I could not find the site, and know you used it for your Haydn story. Many thanks. Paul Solman: The site I like and use is measuringworth.com. It’s an enormously handy tool for converting dollar figures from the past to the present — and pounds too. Especially interesting is the feature that allows you to compute worth seven different ways: from the CPI to share of GDP. It gives a good sense of how subjective the conversion to ‘today’s’ value can be. Our story featured Handel, by the way, not Haydn, though I understand your typo: the orchestra that performed the Messiah is “The Handel and Haydn Society.” Maybe we’ll do a story on Franz Josef Haydn next holiday season, or even on his brother Michael, if someone can suggest an economics angle. Seriously. Who’d have thought we’d get a Making Sen$e story out of the Messiah? Not me. (Watch a larger version of ‘How Handel Orchestrated a Classic Financial Portfolio’ here.) This entry is cross-posted on the Making Sen$e page, where correspondent Paul Solman answers your economic and business questions _Follow Paul on Twitter._ We're not going anywhere. Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on! Donate now By — Paul Solman Paul Solman Paul Solman has been a correspondent for the PBS News Hour since 1985, mainly covering business and economics. @paulsolman
Paul Solman answers questions from NewsHour viewers and web users on business and economic news most days on his Making Sen$e page. Here’s Tuesday’s query: Name: Roland Weiser Question: I would appreciate the name of the site where you can obtain today’s value for currency in the past. I’m writing a family memoir: my father worked in Cairo, Egypt as a pharmacist in 1906 and was paid LE 18 [Egyptian Pounds] per month. How much would that be in today’s dollar value? I could not find the site, and know you used it for your Haydn story. Many thanks. Paul Solman: The site I like and use is measuringworth.com. It’s an enormously handy tool for converting dollar figures from the past to the present — and pounds too. Especially interesting is the feature that allows you to compute worth seven different ways: from the CPI to share of GDP. It gives a good sense of how subjective the conversion to ‘today’s’ value can be. Our story featured Handel, by the way, not Haydn, though I understand your typo: the orchestra that performed the Messiah is “The Handel and Haydn Society.” Maybe we’ll do a story on Franz Josef Haydn next holiday season, or even on his brother Michael, if someone can suggest an economics angle. Seriously. Who’d have thought we’d get a Making Sen$e story out of the Messiah? Not me. (Watch a larger version of ‘How Handel Orchestrated a Classic Financial Portfolio’ here.) This entry is cross-posted on the Making Sen$e page, where correspondent Paul Solman answers your economic and business questions _Follow Paul on Twitter._ We're not going anywhere. Stand up for truly independent, trusted news that you can count on! Donate now