Faster, better and cheaper

A couple of posts on how just how much cheaper things get over time. First up, long distance:

In 1920, it cost $26 a minute to make a phone call from New York to Los Angeles. Today, it's virtually free as this article in today's Washington Post points out. But that $26 figure was in 1920 dollars. In today's dollars, the cost in 1920 was $287.

And portable entertainment:

This month in 1979 Sony introduced the first Walkman (initially called the Soundabout), a small portable cassette-tape player designed to be used with headphones. It was priced at $199.95. In today’s dollars that’s $540.

Nothing new, but I usually forget the magnitude of the change. Such figures sure are a good antidote to those who talk about the good old days.