Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Grounded Concorde Parts Fly High at Auction

by Tim Stevens on October 2, 2007 at 07:03 AM

Grounded Concorde Parts Fly High at AuctionThe Concorde was one of the most iconic bits of technology of the twentieth century. At its introduction in 1969, the supersonic jet's delta wings and pointy nose screamed speed seemed to herald a future of supersonic air transport. Unfortunately, over its nearly 30 year career, the Concorde would instead remain a symbol of a seemingly missed opportunity, with rather more boring and decidedly slower aircraft from companies like Boeing taking over the market. (We should also mention that part of of the reason for its demise was the difficulty in letting anyone approve the super noisy jet to fly over their neighborhoods and some serious environmental concerns.) It was retired in 2003, likely to never fly again, and if you never got to fly in one well, you just missed a chance to own a little piece of one.

To raise funds for a new aerospace museum, a collection of random parts and pieces from the Concorde aircraft auctioned off earlier this week in Toulouse, France (home of airplane manufacturer Airbus). The parts ranged from a piece of the landing gear assembly, weighing in at 1.2 tons, to rather more tangible (and portable) items such as an airspeed indicator and a toilet seat.

That toilet seat ultimately sold for a paltry $7,155, while the airspeed indicator went for nearly $41,000. Not exactly pocket change, but with the Concorde's allure continuing to increase over the years, the grounded toilet seat's value will only go up from here.

From BBC News

Related Links:

Tags: Airplanes, Auctions, Concorde, Retro-Tech

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular