Concorde (first edition)

Wolfgang Tillmans
Concorde (first edition)

Photographs: Wolfgang Tillmans

Publisher: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

128 pages

Year: 1997

Comments: Softcover under dust jacket, 24 x 16,2, color photographs. First edition, first printing 1997. Text in English and German. In very good condition.

"Concorde is perhaps the last example of a techno-utopian invention from the sixties still to be operating and fully functioning today. It's futuristic shape, speed and ear-numbing thunder grabs people's imagination today as much as it did when it first took off in 1969. It's an environmental nightmare conceived in 1962 when technology and progress was the answer to everything and the sky was no longer a limit. It flies at more than double the speed of sound, at a maximum of 2333 km/h in an altitude of 16000 m. It's empty weight is 85900 kg and it takes up to 94750 kg fuel at a capacity of 100 passengers. Due to rising fuel prices and environmental pressures, supersonic travel never really became a reality. Only fourteen Concordes, excluding prototypes, have ever been built and are currently flying between Paris or London and New York in just under 3½ hours. For the chosen few, flying Concorde is apparently a glamorous but cramped and slightly boring routine whilst to watch it in air, landing or taking-off is a strange and free spectacle, a super modern anachronism and an image of the desire to overcome time and distance through technology."

- Text from the of the cover flip.