Georgia Tech Origins

Georgia Tech Origins. A Tech Giant's Hand-tooled History. The Georgia School of Technology held its first classes in the fall of 1888 in two towering buildings. One of them, now known as Tech Tower, housed classes taught by five professors. The other was a machine shop, fully stocked with a foundry, forge, boiler room and engine room, designed to give students hands-on skills while producing goods the school could sell for revenue. At the time, the school's only available degree was in mechanical engineering, with degrees in electrical, civil, textile, and chemical engineering all offered by 1901. , To reflect its evolution into a full technical institute and research university, the school's name was changed in 1948 to the Georgia Institute of Technology. Though female students weren't officially admitted until 1952, women were attending the night school (which would eventually become Georgia State University) as early as 1917. In 1961, Georgia Tech began admitting qualified applicants of any race, becoming the first major state university in the Deep South to voluntarily admit African American students.