The Georgia School of Technology opens its…

The Georgia School of Technology opens its doors in the fall of 1888 with two buildings.

One building (now Tech Tower, an administrative headquarters) has classrooms to teach students; the second building features a shop and has a foundry, forge, boiler room, and engine room.

It is designed specifically for students to work and produce goods to sell and fund the school.

The two buildings are equal in size to show the importance of teaching both the mind and the hands; though, at the time, there is some disagreement to whether the machine shop should be used to turn a profit.

Initially, the school offers only a degree in mechanical engineering.

The idea of a technology school in Georgia had been introduced in 1865 during the Reconstruction period.

Two former Confederate officers, Major John Fletcher Hanson (an industrialist) and Nathaniel Edwin Harris (a politician and eventually Governor of Georgia), who had become prominent citizens in the town of Macon, Georgia after the Civil War, strongly believed that the South needed to improve its technology to compete with the industrial revolution that was occurring throughout the North.

However, because the American South of this era is mainly populated by agricultural workers and few technical developments were occurring, a technology school is needed.

In 1882, the Georgia State Legislature had authorized a committee, led by Harris, to visit the Northeast to see firsthand how technology schools worked.

They were impressed by educational models developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Worcester County Free Institute of Industrial Science (now Worcester Polytechnic Institute).

The committee had recommended adapting the Worcester model, which stressed a combination of "theory and practice", the "practice" component including student employment and production of consumer items to generate revenue for the school.

On October 13, 1885, Georgia Governor Henry D. McDaniel had signed the bill to create and fund the new school.

In 1887, Atlanta pioneer Richard Peters donated to the state four acres (one point six hectares) of the site of a failed garden suburb called Peters Park.

The site is bounded on the south by North Avenue, and on the west by Cherry Street.

He then sold five adjoining acres of land to the state for US$10,000, equivalent to about US$258,666.67 now.