Emerson's function for the evening last night was a tour of the Marconi estate, outside of Bologna. This is the Marconi museum, but it is not generally open to the public, so we were able to see things that most folk don't get to. We saw Marconi's labs, his actual hardware, and heard him speak, both in English and Italian (his mother was Irish-- an heiress to the Jameson Irish Whisky fortune) so he was quite effortlessly bilingual.
We saw a demonstration of the first spark gap experiments, using the actual (!!) original devices in some cases, and then were shown a re-creation of the radio room on the Titanic...the first sea rescue in which wireless played a significant part.
Also introduced as an Emerson employee for the first time was Peter Zornio, late of Honeywell, who had just spent an enforced six month vacation before joining Emerson this week.
Then we adjourned to participate in that quintessential Italian sport: team eating.
We went to a fantastic country restaurant outside Bologna called Ca' Vecchio (literally "this old house")which, unfortunately, has no website. We were stuffed by a seven course traditional Italian meal while we all talked about stuff, industry and personal.
The actual press briefing begins this morning at 9. Stay tuned.
