The story
Founded by W. Harry Vaughan in 1934, in Atlanta.1
Establishment
After being founded in 1885, Georgia Tech grew from a trade school into a university over several decades. However, there was little state initiative to see the school expand significantly until 1919. That year, in a move similar to the Hatch Act of 1887's establishment of agricultural experiment stations, the federal debate over whether to create engineering experiment stations similarly spurred the Georgia General Assembly to pass an act titled "Establishing State Engineering Experiment Station at the Georgia School of Technology." This station was established with the goal of the "encouragement of industries and commerce" within the state. The federal effort ultimately failed and the state did not finance the organization.
In 1929, some Georgia Tech faculty members belonging to Sigma Xi started a Research Club at Tech that met once a month. One of the monthly subjects, proposed by W. Harry Vaughan, was a collection of issues related to Georgia Tech, such as library development, and the development of a state engineering station. This group investigated the forty existing engineering experiment stations at universities around the country, and a report was compiled by Harold Bunger, Montgomery Knight, and Vaughan in December 1929. Their report noted that several similar organizations had been opened across the country at other engineering schools and were successful in local economic development.
In 1933, S. V. Sanford, president of the University of Georgia, proposed that a "technical research activity" be established at Georgia Tech in order to boost the state's struggling economy in the midst of the Great Depression. The Georgia Board of Regents provided the new Engineering Experiment Station with $5,000 (equivalent to $100,000 in 2024), and Georgia Tech provided infrastructure and personnel. The station started operation in April 1934.
Early years
Vaughan was selected as the Engineering Experiment Station's acting director in April 1934 and hired 13 part-time faculty and a few graduate assistants. The station's initial areas of focus were textiles, ceramics, and helicopter engineering. The early work of the station was conducted in the basement of the Old Shop Building next to Tech Tower, and Vaughan's office was in the Aeronautical Engineering Building. The station's name was technically the State Engineering Experiment Station, but it was generally referred to as the Engineering Experiment Station (EES) or simply "the research station".
By 1938, the Engineering Experiment Station was producing useful technology, and the station needed a method to conduct contract work outside the state budget. Consequently, the Industrial Development Council (IDC) was formed. The IDC was created as a non-profit contract organization for the EES, which allowed the EES to receive federal contracts while still retaining its relationship with Georgia Tech and the State of Georgia. It was created by the Chancellor of the University System and the president of Georgia Power Company, and the Engineering Experiment Station's director was a member of the council. The IDC later became the Georgia Tech Research Corporation, which currently serves as the sole contract organization for all Georgia Tech faculty and departments. In addition, the contract organization manages the intellectual property that results from research.
Examples of projects undertaken under Vaughan's directorship include Montgomery Knight's helicopter research, the Georgia Economic Survey, $6,000 (equivalent to $110,000 in 2024) in aeronautical research for the Guggenheim Foundation, and textile research that created cotton roving and spinning processes that were three to five times faster than contemporary practices. Vaughan was instrumental in securing a permanent building for the station, initially known as the Research Building; several years later it was expanded and named the Thomas Hinman Research Building, after Atlanta dentist and university donor Thomas Hinman. After Vaughan left for the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1940, Harold Bunger (head of the Chemistry Department) took over as acting director. However, Bunger died not long thereafter in August 1941. Bunger's successor was Gerald Rosselot, who had been appointed assistant director by Georgia Tech's president in 1940.
World War II
The number and value of contracts coming to the station significantly increased during World War II; the 1943–1944 budget was the first in which industry and government contracts exceeded the station's other income, most notably, its state appropriation. Director Vaughan had initially prepared the faculty for fewer incoming contracts as the Georgia General Assembly had cut the station's appropriation by 40%, but increased support from industry and government eventually compensated for lower state funding. World War II is credited with GTRI's entry into electronics, especially telecommunications and electronic warfare; the electronics and communications work that Director Rosselot attracted is still a mainstay of GTRI research. Two of the larger projects were a study on the propagation of electromagnetic waves, and United States Navy–sponsored radar research.
At the end of World War II, Georgia Tech had about $240,000 (equivalent to $3,400,000 in 2024) annually in sponsored research. Important investments during Rosselot's administration at the Engineering Experiment Station included the purchase of an electron microscope in 1946 for $13,000 (equivalent to $200,000 in 2024), the first such instrument in the Southeastern United States and one of few in the United States at the time. The Research Building was expanded, and a $300,000 (equivalent to $3,300,000 in 2024) Westinghouse A-C network calculator was given to Georgia Tech by Georgia Power in 1947.
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Rosselot's administration included the 1946 establishment of the Industrial Development Council, renamed to the Georgia Tech Research Institute in 1948 and its present name, the Georgia Tech Research Corporation, in 1984. The Georgia Board of Regents had ruled that all money received in a year had to be spent that year, which was problematic because most government contracts the EES had received spanned multiple years. Georgia Tech president Blake Van Leer and vice president Cherry Emerson solution was to create the Industrial Development Council, a non-profit corporation that would manage contracts for research services and subsequently hire the Engineering Experiment Station to perform the research. It would handle patents garnered through research, and distribute funds garnered from contracts and patents as needed. The new organization was almost immediately used to weather a severe drop in state support (from $89,000 to $3,000) during the recession of 1949.
Scientific Atlanta
Glen P. Robinson and six other Georgia Tech researchers (including Robinson's former professor and future EES director Jim Boyd and EES director Gerald Rosselot) each contributed $100 (equivalent to $1,000 in 2024) and founded Scientific Associates (later known as Scientific Atlanta) on October 31, 1951, with the initial goal of marketing antenna structures being developed by the radar branch of the EES. Robinson worked as the general manager without pay for the first year; after the fledgling company's first contract resulted in a $4,000 loss, Robinson (upon request) refunded five of the six other initial investors.
From 1950 to 1952, there were a series of disputes between EES director Rosselot and Georgia Tech vice president Cherry Emerson over the station's finances and Rosselot's hand in founding Scientific Associates. When it was founded in October 1951, Rosselot was president and CEO of Scientific Associates; at issue was the potential conflict of interest with his role at Georgia Tech, and what, if any, role Georgia Tech should have in technology transfer to the marketplace. Emerson later instituted a policy requiring EES employees wishing to work with Scientific Associates to make a written request to the president of Georgia Tech. However, Rosselot's participation in Scientific Associates' founding and early operations ensured the eventual success of Scientific Atlanta and facilitated subsequent technology transfer by Georgia Tech's VentureLab and the Advanced Technology Development Center.
In September 1952, the Board of Regents requested an audit of EES's financial operation. Of primary concern was the reporting of overhead income, which the Board suspected was inadequate. The audit found discrepancies in the accounts receivable that were attributed to EES's practice of delaying reporting information on receivables by a month, a tactic that had become common to ensure working capital due to the regents' failure to adequately fund the station. Though Rosselot denied malfeasance, the practice nonetheless did not conform to the University System of Georgia's established procedures for budget reporting. As a result, Rosselot went on leave from his post at Georgia Tech in November 1952, pending the acceptance of his resignation by the chancellor, which became effective March 1, 1953. Following his resignation, Rosselot soon accepted a position with the Bendix Corporation's aviation division.
Cold War era
In March 1950, Herschel H. Cudd was appointed head of EES's Chemical Sciences division. After Gerald Rosselot went on leave pending his resignation, Cudd was named acting director of EES in November 1952, then named director in July 1953, and resigned in November 1953 to accept a much higher-paying position at the American Viscoe Corporation. Although he was in the post for only a year, Cudd made far-reaching changes to the station. Under Rosselot, research had been increasingly concentrated on a few researchers; Cudd reversed this trend to the extent that EES's 1952–53 Annual Report stated that 66 faculty in 15 schools performed research at the station that year. Cudd created a new promotion system for researchers that is still in use to this day. Many EES researchers held the rank 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. The new system, approved in the spring of 1953, used the Board of Regents' qualifications for promotion and mirrored the academic tenure track.
Cudd spent a significant amount of the EES operating budget on improving laboratory facilities. Cudd's successor Paul K. Calaway, previously director of the School of Chemistry, made a last-minute request to the contract organization in May 1954 to cover the resulting $20,000 (equivalent to $190,000 in 2024) deficit. In 1954, a faculty committee appointed to do a comprehensive study of Georgia Tech, "The Aims and Objectives of the Georgia Institute of Technology", noted that of EES's budget of $2 million for 1953–1954 (equivalent to $19 million in 2024), about 83% was sponsored by governmental agencies, and about two thirds of that was classified. In 1955, the Rich Electronic Computer Center, a new wing on the Hinman Research Building, was dedicated; the project was paid for by $85,000 (equivalent to $780,000 in 2024) from the Rich Foundation and a matching grant from the EES's contract organization.
This period saw a significant expansion in Georgia Tech's postgraduate education programs, which received substantial support from the EES. Despite its slow start, with the first Master of Science programs in the 1920s and the first doctorate in 1946, the program became firmly established. In 1952 alone, around 80 students earned graduate degrees while working at EES.
James E. Boyd was promoted to Assistant Director of Research at the station in 1954, and succeeded Calaway as the director on July 1, 1957. While at Georgia Tech, Boyd wrote an influential article about the role of research centers at institutes of technology, which argued that research should be integrated with education, and Boyd correspondingly involved undergraduates in his research. Boyd was known for recruiting faculty capable of both teaching and performing notable research; one such example is his recruitment of noted physicist and nuclear scientist Earl W. McDaniel.
Under Boyd's purview, the Engineering Experiment Station gained many electronics-related contracts, to the extent that an Electronics Division was created in 1959; it would focus on radar and communications. Boyd championed the establishment of research facilities. In 1955, Georgia Tech president Blake Van Leer appointed Boyd to Georgia Tech's Nuclear Science Committee. The committee recommended the creation of a Radioisotopes Laboratory Facility and a large research reactor on campus. The former was built and dedicated on January 7, 1959, and could receive, store, and process radioactive materials. The Frank H. Neely Research Reactor was completed in 1963 and was operational until 1996, when it was defueled due to safety concerns related to the nearby 1996 Summer Olympics events. The reactor was permanently decommissioned in 1999.
Throughout the Cold War era, radar and antenna related applications remained a prominent research activity in EES' contracts with the Defense Department. Millimeter wave radar research, in particular, was prominent in EES' defense activities from the late 1950s, when the first military-designation millimeter-wave radar was built at Georgia Tech, to the 1980s, when GTRI developed what was then the world's highest frequency microwave radar. EES' high-frequency radar research found applications in radio astronomy, meteorology and climate studies, which improved weather forecasting and climate models and assisted in NASA's planning of the Cassini and Galileo missions. Expansion of EES' antenna research in the 1970s, in particular, the development of an air defense antenna for the U.S. Army Missile Command, resulted in the establishment of the Huntsville Research Laboratory, GTRI's oldest off-campus research center.
In 1980, EES developed a TEMPEST-approved version of the Apple II Plus for U.S. Army FORSCOM, and used it as a component in the earliest versions of the Microfix system. Fielded in 1982, the Microfix system was the first tactical system using video disk (Laserdisk) map technology providing zoom and scroll over map imagery coupled with a point database of intelligence data such as order of battle, airfields, roadways, and bridges. President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative resulted in the largest research contract in Georgia Tech's history in 1985. The $21.3 million contract (equivalent to $63.8 million in 2025) was divided between GTRI and the School of Electrical Engineering. GTRI landed its own largest-ever contract in 1986—$14.7 million (equivalent to $43.2 million in 2025) to create a Soviet surface-to-air missile system simulator. In 1989, as part of a project with the U.S. Army, and using technology it had been developing since the late 1960s, GTRI completed the largest outdoor compact antenna range at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
On April 10, 1989, GTRI announced that one of its research groups, led by James Mahaffey, had duplicated the results of a controversial University of Utah experiment that had allegedly achieved cold fusion in a jar of water. Four days following the announcement, the researchers discovered that the instrument used to measure neutrons was damaged by the heat of the liquid and gave false, elevated readings. GTRI immediately retracted its support of the Utah researchers' findings, citing the flawed measurement. Director Donald J. Grace referred to the mistake as "embarrassing", recalling that he and Mahaffey "blushed the whole time".
Expansion and reorganization
The Georgia General Assembly amended EES' charter in the early 1960s, authorizing an "industrial extension service to meet the technical, informational and other needs of industry and local development groups". This led to an expansion of some of EES' activities that it had been involved in since the 1940s. In particular, EES began providing additional services as a technological incubator during this time frame, and began an international development initiative that improved infrastructure and facilitated technology transfer in over 40 developing nations. The station's expanded mission bolstered its traditional research strengths, resulting in work on projects that improved radar operation on the Saturn rocket and in the invention of the compact antenna range by Richard C. Johnson. Throughout the 1960s, these changes brought about an increased focus on research that sought to solve societal problems rather than research for the sake of pure scientific knowledge. This came at a time when director Maurice W. Long began placing an emphasis on graduate education and multidisciplinary research.
The late 1960s saw a period of student unrest, and university research centers that worked on contracts for the Department of Defense were often the site of student protests. Neither Georgia Tech nor EES became the focus of protests, and Long attributed this to the school's "conservative student body". For other reasons, however, EES became embattled financially and politically as a result of cuts in federal and state spending as well as cuts to the space program. Georgia Tech's academic units were similarly affected by these cuts, which helped rekindle the debate over EES' relationship with the school.
Georgia Tech president Arthur G. Hansen's "bold and controversial" solution to both entities' problems was to completely absorb the station into Georgia Tech's academic units. On paper, this would dramatically increase Georgia Tech's stated research funding (as all of it would be performed through the academic units), and it would increase options and financial aid for graduate students. Another, less publicized, reason was that Georgia Tech would gain access to the contract organization's reserve fund, which was said to be over $1 million (equivalent to $8.3 million in 2025). Thomas E. Stelson, Dean of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech, was named to "reorganize" the station. Publicly, Stelson's task was simply to recommend a plan for reorganization, but the administration clearly intended for Georgia Tech and the Engineering Experiment Station to be closely integrated. Maurice W. Long, who was director of the station at the time, viewed the move as a violation of the EES's charter as legislatively established by the Georgia General Assembly in 1919, and asserted that Georgia Tech did not have the authority to merge the two institutions. EES employees and business executives involved with the station appealed to the Georgia Board of Regents and to Governor of Georgia (and future United States president) Jimmy Carter (himself a Georgia Tech alumnus); the controversy received coverage in both The Technique and the Atlanta Constitution.
When former EES director James E. Boyd was appointed as interim president of Georgia Tech following the departure of Hansen, he stopped the plan for complete absorption of the station, but did allow plans for closer control and more aggressive contract solicitation to proceed. Among these measures were increased resource-sharing, including increased sharing of physical assets and research staff. The latter was evidenced by the increase in joint faculty appointments between the EES and Georgia Tech. The move paid off, and the fiscal year 1970–1971 saw EES win new contracts and grants, totaling a record $5.2 million (equivalent to $41.3 million in 2025). Stelson was left in charge of the station's reorganization and was named interim director upon Long's departure in 1975. During his tenure, Stelson reorganized the station into eight semi-autonomous laboratories in order to allow each to develop a specialization and clientele, a model it retains (with slight modifications) to this day.
From Wikipedia’s article on Georgia Tech Research Institute, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3