Dear Philippe and MMD,  In response to your inquiry regarding the
U.S. price index, my new book, "The Golden Age of Automatic Musical
Instruments", will contain this information.

With the color photograph of each instrument there is a detail box
that includes history of ownership, serial number, year of manufacture,
era of popularity, type of music used, instrumentation, dimensions,
etc.  The detail box also includes the original cost where known, the
conversion to U.S. dollars in that year, and the equivalent wage
earners' index, or the number of hours that it would take the average
wage earner to earn that amount in that year.

The Appendix includes a table for converting French francs, Swiss
francs, British pounds and German marks to U.S. Dollars for each year
from 1871 to 1930.  It also includes a table of multipliers for
converting to the U.S.  Hourly Wage Index for any year from 1881 to
1998.

Using the tables, one may take the price of any instrument from an old
catalog and convert it to the equivalent number of hours that the
average wage earner would have had to work in that year to buy one.
Obviously, no average wage earner could afford a large orchestrion that
cost the equivalent of 50,000 hours of work - these were only
affordable by businesses, not individuals.  However, the tables make it
possible to compare relative prices of instruments.

Richard Howe of Houston, Texas, provided me with this information,
based on his article "Converting the Original Prices of Instruments
into Today's Dollars," in the MBSI Journal, Volume XXXVII, No. 3
(Winter 1991), pp. 1-13.

Art Reblitz