The artist's initials can be seen on the backglass, on the tail of the aircraft on the tarmac.
Pictured in this listing is an Early Production game with serial number 0003 and having bumper caps with the 'radial blue arrows' design indicating '1000 points", just like the game in the manufacturer flyer. At variance from the flyer, the factory did not wire a jack in this game to allow a choice between Replay or Add-a-ball modes, leaving it as Replay-only, a fact supported by the schematic that came with the game. That is probably why only the first five of the ten Ball-in-Play lights in the backbox insert were wired with lamp sockets, leaving blank holes for what would be balls 6 thru 10. Elsewhere on the insert, the factory labeled a place for a jack field for the operator to select one of ten score thresholds at which the biri-biri sound would play, but did not install the jack for it. We speculate that the higher thresholds for this award would require an add-a-ball mode that this game did not have. The schematic indicated biri-biri was awarded at a fixed threshold of 4 million points.
Our speculation may be groundless because we have pictures of a game with serial number 0120 showing it also does not have the biri-biri threshold jack, yet it does have the factory-installed Add-a-ball capability. A former owner of this game states the biri-biri activated at a fixed threshold of 4 million points (with a sound effect as if World War III has begun!) but there was no schematic with the game to see if it supported Add-a-ball without biri-biri threshold choices. Nine of the ten Ball-in-Play lights in the backbox insert were wired with lamp sockets, leaving a blank hole for the tenth one. A design error exists that allows a player to insert a second coin just before shooting the first ball in play, and this adds additional balls to play. Interestingly, this game has an alternate backglass design, in that the wings of the airborne Concorde lack the many gold and blue lines shown on all other glasses for which we have pictures. Also, the control tower is drawn without the artful lines to indicate it was constructed of individual bricks. Our only image of this backglass barely evidences these unique differences, and we invite additional images from anyone who might have this 'alternate' version. As would be expected of a replay export game, the reverse side of the backglass shows the ball count for 6 through 10 is represented by actual numbers and not the typical symbols used by games intended for domestic use in Italy.
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The first Concorde, the 001, flew its maiden flight on March 2, 1969 over France. The first commercial passenger flights took place on January 21, 1976 when a British Airways flight traveled from Heathrow to Bahrain at the same time that an Air France jet flew from Paris to Rio de Janeiro. The last supersonic flight occurred October 24, 2003 when British Airways flew from New York to Heathrow. Air France had already grounded its supersonic fleet the previous May.
The British/French Concorde was not the first supersonic airliner to fly. A Soviet prototype Tupolev TU-144 made its first flight on December 31, 1968 but didn't break the sound barrier until June 5, 1969.
