What This Is
Most inflation calculators know one measure: the consumer price index. That answers a real question — what a dollar buys at the till — and stops there. The Dollar Time Machine asks the same question eight ways, because a dollar measured against groceries and a dollar measured against a house, an ounce of gold or a share of the S&P 500 have not done remotely the same thing, and the gap between those answers is the story.
Put in an amount, pick a year you care about, and read what it takes to keep pace. It runs both directions: forward to see what an old dollar is worth now, and back to see how little of an old dollar today’s is. Every yardstick reaches back to the start of its own published record and forward to 2101 at a growth rate you control.