On Oct. 13, the Georgia Legislature passed a bill appropriating $65,000 to found a technical school.
Atlanta was chosen as the location for the Georgia School of Technology.
Developer Richard Peters donated four acres of land known as Peters Park to the new school.
Isaac S. Hopkins, president of Emory College in Oxford, Georgia, is named president of the Georgia School of Technology.

During the summer, the Shop Building and Academic Building are constructed on the campus, located just north of the city limits. The Administration Building contains administrative offices as well as classrooms for math, chemistry and English. Students learn trade skills in the Shop, which contains blacksmith, metal and machine shops and two foundries.

President Hopkins, who also teaches physics, recruits Lyman Hall (mathematics), Charles Lane (English), R.B. Shepherd (mechanical and free-hand drawing) and W.H. Emerson (chemistry) to serve as Tech’s first faculty.

Each county in Georgia is allocated a number of full-tuition scholarships equal to the number of seats that county holds in the General Assembly. Out-of-state students are charged $150 a year.

The first 84 students register on Oct. 3 and take entrance exams. The school is open only to white males; 64 years would pass before white women were admitted, and another 9 years after that would go by before the first black students enter Tech.

The school’s motto: To know, to do, to be. Its symbol is an anvil.

The Georgia School of Technology begins classes on Oct. 8 with the School of Mechanical Engineering and departments of chemistry, mathematics and English. Students are required to take four shop classes: wood, foundry, machine and blacksmith. The curriculum is oriented toward vocational training, and Tech administrators believe the school can pay its bills by providing commercial shop work.
By January 1889, 129 students had registered to work toward the only degree offered, the bachelor of science in mechanical engineering.

John Saylor "Uncle Si" Coon arrives on campus to teach mechanical engineering. Called by many the greatest Tech professor of his time, Coon retired in 1923 as head of the School of Mechanical Engineering.