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.

This morning, Emerson announced the roll out of the ROW (that's Rest of the World for those of you who aren't chauvinistic Americophiles) version of the Smart Wireless First Release products. The ROW version is at 2.4 GHz, while the USA version is 900 MHz. This produces some advantages and some disadvantages.

Otherwise, the products are the same as they were when they were introduced at Emerson Exchange last year...Gateway, dP transmitter--configured a number of ways--, and temperature sensor. You can read about them here from October of last year. or here.

The big difference between the rollout at Emerson Exchange and the rollout here in Bologna is that Emerson is currently shipping product for the 900 MHz version. Bob Karchnia, Emerson Process Management's Vice President of Technology, told me, "We are pleased that we are shipping ahead of forecast. Obviously I am not going to tell you how many we've shipped. But we are on track to ship more wireless this year than the entire wireless market size last year."

They've still not released the Model 775 HART wireless adaptor (the HART Thumb, as it is affectionately known, because of its shape) and they've not yet set a price on it.

However, you can bet that Emerson, who has been doing corporate pricing strategy longer than most other companies, will have the price down to exactly what they can expect to get before they can get it built and the HART Wireless standard is released.

Now what this means for end users, around the world, is that now wireless, especially hardened for the industrial end user market, is real. End users can purchase a starter pack designed to get their feet wet, and they can add to the systems as they go along. End users can now start thinking about the new things they can do with wireless sensors.