page_title: Georgia Tech Research Institute
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Georgia Tech Research Institute / History / Early years
caption_attribution_description: English: The Hinman Research Building, also known as the Engineering Research Building, the primary facility of the en:Georgia Tech Research Institute from the 1930s until more buildings were acquired decades later.
context_page_description: The Georgia Tech Research Institute is the nonprofit applied research arm of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. GTRI employs around 2,400 people, and is involved in approximately $600 million in research annually for more than 200 clients in industry and government.
  Initially known as the Engineering Experiment Station, the organization was proposed in 1929 by W. Harry Vaughan as an analog to the agricultural experiment stations; the Georgia General Assembly passed a law that year creating the organization on paper but did not allocate funds to start it. To boost the state's struggling economy in the midst of the Great Depression, funds were found, and the station was finally established with US$5,000 in April 1934.
  GTRI's research spans a variety of disciplines, including national defense, homeland security, public health, education, mobile and wireless technologies, and economic development. Major customers for GTRI research include United States Department of Defense agencies, the state of Georgia, non-defense federal agencies, and private industry.
context_section_description: 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 $90,000 in 2018) 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.
caption: The Thomas Hinman Research Building, built in 1939 and expanded in the 1950s.
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