Augusto Camillo Pietro Monaco was born in Buenos Aires in 1903 to Ottavio Monaco and Maria Crespellani. Ottavio Monaco was the second last of the nine children of patriot Camillo Monaco, a prominent figure in the unification of Italy, and Nicolina Leanza, daughter of Luigi Leanza, a Napoleonic officer and one of the leaders of the Naples uprising of 1848.
Ottavio Monaco had moved to Argentina along with his brothers Alfieri and Garibaldi. Garibaldi was a physician who invented an instrument for the removal of tonsils and wrote numerous scientific papers. Alfieri and Ottavio set up a small workshop and a farm which, as a result of some bad investments on the part of Alfieri and the crisis that affected South America in the ‘Twenties, went wrong. After graduating in engineering in Buenos Aires, Augusto returned to Italy towards the end of the decade and settled in Turin where he began to develop mechanical and industrial chemistry projects, sectors he was a specialist in.
A free, independent character if somewhat anarchic, Augusto always wanted to work for himself and refused to put his immense talent and creativity at the service of an employer. The family often talked about the episode just before World War II when he showed Fiat the Trossi-Monaco prototype and Senator Agnelli proposed he come and work for Fiat. Augusto replied by asking whether he would have to clock in and when the Senator answered that even he was required to do so, replied: “In that case, Senator, thanks very much but I prefer to work for myself”. Even so, Agnelli gave him the use of a workshop and the machinery necessary to develop his project but maybe because of the enormous costs or because the war was looming on the horizon, nothing came of it.
After the war, Augusto worked on many projects and filed a great number of patents including, in partnership with others, that of synthetic diamonds (later sold by the shareholders to a Swiss company).
Towards the end of the ‘Sixties he moved to Livorno with his wife and died there on 4 November 1997 at the age of nearly 95.
