Pennine
Productions -- details of
"Electronic Brains (4): Water on the Brain"
"Electronic Brains (4): Water on the Brain"
Date:
Time:
Duration:
Presenter:
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Repeat date:
Repeat time:
Description:
Pennine
Productions -- details of "Electronic Brains (4): Water on the Brain" |
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| Network: | Radio 4 | |
Date: |
Tuesday, November 20, 2001 | |
Time: |
09:30 | |
Duration: |
15 | |
Presenter: |
Mark Whitaker | |
Producer: |
Mike Hally | |
Repeat date: |
Tuesday, October 15, 2002 | |
Repeat time: |
15:45 | |
Description:
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Shortly after World War II, a New Zealand engineer started a sociology degree at the London School of Economics. Bill Phillips had already shown remarkable courage and ingenuity, winning an award for bravery in the Far East, then making electrical gadgets as a prisoner of war. He designed simple immersion heaters for his fellow POWs’ nightly cups of tea; the guards never worked out why the camp lights dimmed around 10 o’clock. He made a simple radio (he’d have been executed if caught) and heard news of the bombing of Hiroshima. At the LSE he didn’t take to sociology but economics fascinated him. He wrote an essay comparing the national economy to a machine pumping coloured water round clear plastic tubes. An older student persuaded him to build one, and it was an immediate success. More than a dozen were made eventually, with Ford buying one and another going to the Central Bank of Guatemala. Within a few years he was a professor and became one of the giants among post-war economists. He died young, but friends and colleagues recall this remarkable man. One “Phillips Machine” is still working at Cambridge University, where leading economist Brian Henry, who helped restore it, recalls seeing this “ingenious teaching device” for the first time. Although he had already studied economics for 3 years, that was the first time he actually understood what the “circular flow of money” was all about, because he could see it. | |
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