Brent Hilpert wrote:
  The Antikythera mechanism would seem a pertinent
example of that. If people had
 attempted to dismantle it back when it was discovered, rather than leaving it
 alone, I think it unlikely we would have learned what we have since, through
 the modern nuclear-imaging techniques that have been applied to it. 
 I beg to differ, in that I suspect the corrosion could have been reversed
 using electric methods. Ben. 
Entropy. Corrosion is not a two-way process.