Fascinating for all of us interested in industrial history! Thank you! So
you "got all pig iron" as the song goes?

Harry

Harry Needham
Special Advisor - Programme Development
Canadian War Museum
330 Sussex Drive,
Ottawa, Canada
K1A 0M8
Voice: (819) 776-8612  Fax (819) 776-8623
Email: [log in to unmask]

> ----------
> From:         Bode Morin[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To:     Museum discussion list
> Sent:         Wednesday, April 07, 1999 11:59 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      History's Lost and Found
>
> Scott,
>
> Sloss Furnaces is a National Historic Landmark blast furnace site in
> Birmingham, Alabama.  The furnaces made pig iron for foundries across the
> world.  In the early days, workers drained molten iron from the furnace
> into channels cut into a sand floor.  Off of each channel were several
> smaller channels roughly two feet long and eight inches wide.  When filled
> with iron, this arrangement resembled pigletts suckling a sow hence the
> name "pig iron."  Workers would break off the 1500 "pigs" with a
> two-handled sledge hammer and carry the 100 pound iron bars to a storage
> area by hand--every six hours.  This process required a great deal of
> labor.   In the 1890s, a Sloss engineer invented a mechanical pig casting
> machine that could considerably reduce the manpower required to make iron.
>
> The extremely low cost of labor and the desire to maintain a strict social
> order in the South, however, overshadowed the labor saving device and the
> company refused to install it. The machine's designer then took his
> invention North and sold the technology to Andrew Carnagie.   Sloss and
> the
> South essentially "lost" the pig casting machine.
>
> A booming 1920s economy increased the demand for pig iron.  By 1930 new
> Sloss furnaces and a highly mobile workforce changed the character of pig
> iron production and manual labor practices could not meet new production
> levels effectively.
>
> In 1931 the Sloss company purchased a pig casting machine,  essentially
> "finding" the technology it lost 35 years earlier and used it until the
> day
> it closed down.  Today, portions of the 1931 machine still exist along
> with
> many photographs, original construction drawings, and oral interviews.
>
> Let me know if this esoteric example fits your notion of "lost and found."
>
> Bode Morin
> Curator
> Sloss Furnaces Naitonal Historic Landmark
> [log in to unmask]
> (205) 324-1911
>