Blog
Re-birth of the Phillips Machine
9th May 2008
The Guardian today carries a piece on the restoration of the famous Phillips Machine. I would love to be able to take my students to see this in action. Does anyone know if this is possible?
“It is 2 metres (7ft) tall, 1.5 metres wide and a metre deep. It runs on water and most of the time it is screened off at the back of a lecture room in Cambridge. But when the nine members of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee announce their latest decision on interest rates today they will owe a debt of gratitude to the computer built in a garage in south Croydon by Bill Phillips - an engineer turned economist from New Zealand - almost 60 years ago.”
Read more here