A Look at Tech’s Olympic Past

If you’ve been in Atlanta a while, the Summer Olympics might have you walking down memory lane back to 1996, when Georgia Tech played host to the Olympic Village and athletes swarmed the campus and city. 

The Georgia Tech Library Archives has many artifacts from that period. A few items preserved here on campus, which you can explore digitally or at the Library Archives in Crosland Tower, include: 

• The Olympic Torch prototype. Sam Shelton, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, designed the torch burner mechanism for the 1996 Summer Olympics. The torch lives in the Archives in Crosland Tower, and you can view a record from the Digital Library of Georgia. 

• Pins, flags, lots of photographs, and drawings. 

• A collection from Professor Emeritus Phillip Sparling in biology showcasing expertise in kinesiology and distance running and the research he did around athletes’ performance in the Atlanta heat during the Games. 

• Georgia Tech Olympic/Paralympic Planning Office records highlighting the planning for Tech’s participation in the Games, with Georgia Tech serving as the Olympic Village and the venue for boxing and aquatics. 

• The digital repository, a full accounting of the 1996 Olympics from planning and execution to PowerPoints to photographs.