Historical Currency Converter, from WFTSoft, puts a new spin on your ordinary, everyday money changer app. You can use the Historical Currency Converter to calculate the conversion rates for the world’s top currencies — US Dollar, Japanese Yen, British Sterling and the Euro — from January 1971 to the present day.

All the historical data is stored on your iPhone or iPod touch, so you don’t need an Internet connection to find out that 1 US Dollar was worth about 125 Yen April 29, 1988, for example.

To get the latest currency conversion, tap the circular arrow in the lower left corner and Historical Currency Converter will connect to a network and take care of business. On the same day in 2009, 1 US Dollar is now worth about 96 Yen, by the way.

An app like Historical Currency Converter is likely to have broad appeal, given that travel and shopping are the two most common productivity uses of the iPhone beyond making phone calls and checking email, according to a new survey by Compete, a Web analytics company. “Our latest results showed that iPhone owners are using their devices more than other smartphone owners to help them make purchase decisions while they shop and to manage logistics and get information when on the road or considering travel,” says Danielle Nohe, a research director at Compete.

Historical Currency Converter’s streamlined and polished interface make currency conversation as easy as tossing a penny into a wishing well. Enter a number in the Amount field and select a date using a slot-machine-style menu (today’s date is highlighted in blue, which makes selecting the date even easier). Conversions are quick to do using icons for each currency. Tap one icon for “To” and another for “From” and your converted amount will appear in the designated field.

If you want to see how how well a currency has fared over a period of time, turn your iPhone or iPod touch on its side (landscape mode, in other words), and it will automatically display a chart with additional options of viewing trends over 1 month to as far back as 1971. As you can see from the screen capture above, the US Dollar hasn’t done so well against the Japanese Yen in the past year.

Just so you know, the Euro did not come into existence until Dec. 15, 1998, so that’s as far back as you can go for that currency.

In addition to travelers and shoppers, analysts, accountants and business execs, will find Historical Currency Converter a handy tool.

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category: Finance