A. W. H. "Bill" Phillips

New Zealand-born engineer turned economist, best known in mainstream economics for the Phillips curve, and in this vault for building the MONIAC — a hydraulic analog computer that modeled the UK economy with coloured water — first as a self-funded 1949 prototype in a Croydon garage, then in an improved 1950 machine built for the London School of Economics. His own 1950 Economica paper, "Mechanical Models in Economic Dynamics," is the vault's Tier 1 anchor for the machine's actual claimed accuracy (±4%, against a ~2% figure that circulates in later, uncited retellings) and the comparison point every secondary account of the device gets checked against.

References

• claim-phillips-moniac-hydraulic-economic-computer-1949
• claim-phillips-1950-economica-states-hydraulic-computer-accuracy-as-4-percent
• claim-barr-1988-uncited-2-percent-accuracy-figure-contradicted-by-phillips-and-swade
• claim-moniac-400-pound-figure-is-lse-second-machines-budget-not-original-prototype
• Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-20-do-the-moniacs-400-build-cost-and-2.md