The life of New Zealand original thinker, the late Bill Phillips who invented a revolutionary computing machine, has been thoroughly documented in a new book, A Few Hares to Chase.
The book, written by former Reserve Bank head Alan Bollard canvases the life and economics of Phillips, from his roots on a Dannevirke farm to POW camps in wartime, to him mixing it with the British intellectual world.
Phillips, was an electrician who used his knowledge of electrical engineering along with an interest in economics to build the MONIAC machine in the 1940s.
It was machine was a world-first - as a hydraulic-driven economics computing machine, which is now on display at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
He was also known worldwide as the originator of the Phillips Curve - which describes a historical inverse relationship between rates of unemployment and corresponding rates of inflation that result within an economy.
