This month a brightly coloured, trailer-mounted "Matterhorn" fairground ride will leave Bertazzon 3b's factory in Serna-glia, a village nestling under the Alpine foothills north of Venice, bound for a travelling amusement park based near Rochester, New York. Bertazzon 3B is one of around 50 family firms in a manufacturing cluster in northeast Italy that leads the world in turning steel, fibreglass and electronics into roundabouts, bumper cars and other fairground thrills.rnSwiss, Dutch or German companies hold sway when it comes to large and expensive roller coasters, but Italians dominate other rides. Alberto Zamperla, chief executive of Zamperla, the biggest of the Italian firms, with sales of €4om ($55m) in 2007, says attention-grabbing "spectacular" or "extreme" rides (rather than those aimed at children or families) are most in demand at the moment. Zamperla's Giant Discovery reaches a speed of 110kph (70mph), rotating its riders and swinging like a pendulum to suspend them upside down 45 metres above the ground. Italian dominance in such rides depends on a constant stream of innovations in electronics and materials.
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