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
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(205) 324-1911