History of the Georgia Institute of Technology
Founded on October 13, 1885, in Atlanta as the Georgia School of Technology, the university opened in 1888 after the construction of Tech Tower and a shop building and only offered one degree in mechanical engineering.
Recently, the school has gradually improved its academic rankings and has paid significant attention to modernizing the campus, increasing historically low retention rates, and establishing degree options emphasizing research and international perspectives.
[1] The next twenty years were a time of rapid industrial expansion; during this period, Georgia's manufacturing capital, railroad track mileage, and property values would each increase by a factor of three to four.
Major John Fletcher Hanson and Nathaniel Edwin Harris, two former Confederate officers who became prominent citizens in the town of Macon, Georgia, after the war, strongly believed that the South needed to improve its technology to compete with the Industrial Revolution that was occurring throughout the North.
[31] He also played a significant role in developing mechanical engineering into a professional degree program, with a focus on ethics, design and testing, analysis and problem solving, and mathematics.
Leonard Wood, an army officer who had played football at Harvard and was then stationed in Atlanta and taking graduate courses at the school, volunteered to serve as the team's player-coach.
[72] The war also placed on hold extensive fundraising efforts for a new power plant, and made it difficult to find engineers willing to teach at the school; Matheson toured Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and MIT in 1919 but failed to secure a single hire, as none of the students wished to work for such low wages.
[84] As Matheson was leaving for the presidency of Drexel Institute in late 1921, he wrote in The Atlanta Constitution that while Georgia Tech was "my first love" he found it a "humiliating burden" to get enough money from the state legislature to run and enlarge the school.
Notwithstanding ... [soaring] enrollment, donated equipment totaling many thousands of dollars in value, $1,500,000 in subscriptions from friends and other evidences of growth, the legislatures of the past two summers have appropriated only half of the amount actually needed for the operation of the school.
[104] World War II resulted in a dramatic increase of sponsored research, with the 1943–1944 budget being the first in which industry and government contracts exceeded the EES's other income (most notably, its state appropriation).
STI was established as an engineering technology school, to help military personnel returning from World War II gain hands-on experience in technical fields.
The president's daughter Maryly Van Leer Peck was National Chair of Student Affairs at Society of Women Engineers at the time and helped Tech set up a chapter near campus.
[123][125] This period also saw a significant expansion in Georgia Tech's postgraduate education programs, driven largely by the Cold War and the launch of Sputnik; this effort received substantial support from the EES.
Many EES researchers held the title of professor despite lacking a doctorate (or a comparable qualification for promotion as determined by the Georgia Board of Regents), something that irritated members of the teaching faculty.
[135] After Van Leer's death, Paul Weber served as acting president from January 1956 to August 1957, while still holding the title of Dean of Faculties; it was difficult to find a permanent replacement due to discriminatory state laws and the looming issue of integration, along with a salary gap between Georgia Tech and comparable institutions.
[138] After the selection of a replacement in the University of Toledo's Dean of Engineering, Edwin D. Harrison, Weber remained a Georgia Tech administrator and was named vice president for Planning in 1966.
[147][148] Lester Maddox chose to close his restaurant (near Georgia Tech's modern-day Burger Bowl) rather than desegregate, after losing a year-long legal battle in which he challenged the constitutionality of the public accommodations section (Title II) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Wreck is present at all major sporting events and student body functions, and leads the football team into Bobby Dodd Stadium at Historic Grant Field, a duty it has performed since 1961.
In 1955, Van Leer had appointed Boyd to Georgia Tech's Nuclear Science Committee,[155] which recommended the creation of a Radioisotopes Laboratory Facility and a large research reactor.
[161][162] In July 1968, Harrison resigned to the surprise of many in the Georgia Tech community; it was leaked to the press prior to his official announcement, and he subsequently released a public statement, saying that "ten years was long enough to be president of one university".
[168] The chancellor hoped this combination would help resolve a brewing controversy over whether the EES should be integrated into Georgia Tech's academic units to improve both entities' competitiveness for federal money.
Georgia Tech alumni – accustomed to success under football legends John Heisman (whose career wins–losses–draws statistics were 185–70–17), William A. Alexander (134–95–15) and Bobby Dodd (165–64–8) – made repeated calls for Carson's dismissal.
[178] At a meeting on January 8, 1972, the Athletic Association board, led by Boyd, ignored a 42-page list of "charges" drafted by an alumnus, but nevertheless voted to not renew Carson's contract, making him the first Georgia Tech coach to be fired.
[188][page needed] Stelson simultaneously served as the interim director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute from 1975 to 1976,[189] during which time he reorganized the station into eight semi-autonomous laboratories in order to allow each to develop a specialization and clientele—a model that GTRI retains (with slight modifications) to this day.
The resulting 3-D presentation, developed by the institute's Multimedia Laboratory, provided a "1996" view of Atlanta, complete with digitized graphic models of non-existent facilities overlaid on their proposed sites.
The term "virtual reality" was almost unknown in 1989 when Tech's seven-foot tall, three-screen, 3-D interactive video and laser disc projection system debuted during a meeting of the IOC at San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Members of the committee used a trackball and a touch screen to view a dazzling montage of animation, computer graphics, aerial photography, video, and satellite topographical photographs created to depict Atlanta during the Centennial Olympic Games.
Many believe the presentation showed the IOC that Atlanta was a major player in its Olympics bid and served to create the foundation for the city's high-tech theme for the Centennial Games.
As part of Phase I of the Georgia Tech Master Plan of 1997, the area was made more pedestrian-friendly by the removal of access roads and the addition of landscaping improvements, benches, and other facilities.
The other three were found to have used their connections with companies such as Barnes & Noble and Sodexo for their own personal gain, including free access to a $35,000 Georgia Tech football suite under the pretenses of "student outreach".
