ATLANTA — This year marks 30 years since the City of Atlanta hosted the 1996 Olympic Games.
Now, there’s a new exhibit in the city detailing the long-term effect of the historic event.
Channel 2’s Lori Wilson got a first look at the exhibit.
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Atlanta won the bid for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games due, in part, to an innovative video made by the Georgia Institute of Technology.
“Three dimensional renderings that allowed you to sort of fly through the proposed sites,” Kirk Henderson, Georgia Tech Library exhibitions program manager, said. “This is something we take for granted nowadays, but 30 years ago, this was really cutting edge technology.”
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Former Atlanta mayor and U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young called it high-tech hospitality.
Young co-chaired the committee to secure the games for the city, and as the world watched, Georgia Tech transformed into the Olympic Village.
As part of the transformation, the Alexander Memorial Coliseum, now the McCamish Pavilion, was renovated and seven new dorms were added, along with an apartment complex and more.
“In Atlanta ... specifically at Tech ... everything that got built is still around and still in use to this day,” Henderson said.
Connor Lynch, exhibit associate at the Georgia Tech Library, told Channel 2 Action News it took a year to curate the exhibit.
The centerpiece is a set of five torches from five different Olympic Games on loan from Georgia Tech Mechanical Engineering professor Sam Shelton.
“He was one of the main people who helped develop the burning mechanism for the Atlanta torch and for subsequent torches throughout the years,” Lynch said about Shelton.
The exhibit, for its staff, is like a step back in time, showing how much the times have changed since the 1996 Olympic Games.
One exhibit is dedicated to the Paralympics. Atlanta was one of the first cities to host a major sporting event after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
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