Introduction

I would like to dedicate this chapter to James Meade.

On more than one occasion, James Meade described Bill Phillips to me as the ‘nearest to a person of genius that I have known’. This extraordinary volume is a consequence of the initial trust which Meade placed in Phillips. Amongst the LSE staff, it was Meade who initially encouraged Phillips, and it was Meade who offered Phillips the possibility of presenting his machine to Lionel Robbins' seminar. Meade then took a continuing interest in the machine, and also in Phillips' work on economic dynamics and control, to which the machine led.

I had the honour to work with Meade on macroeconomic control questions for a period of ten years from the late 1970s. Meade regarded the work which we and a number of other colleagues did together during the 1980s as a continuation of the research which he had helped Phillips to begin. Meade introduced me to Phillips' work and told me stories about the man and his machine. He also understood the machine better than anybody else that I have met. Once in the late 1980s I had the privilege of watching the machine in operation with Meade, and asking him about it as the water was going round. It is a great sadness to me that I have not been able to discuss this paper with him.