Art Gallery

Russell W. Porter (1871-1949) was an American explorer, architect, artist, and engineer, who was renowned for his contributions in the hobby of “do-it-yourself” telescope making that spread nationwide in the 1920s. Before that, as a student at the Michigan Institute of Technology, he funded his studies by joining Arctic expeditions and even survived being shipwrecked with his fellow explorers from 1902-04. After his rescue and return to New England, he tried his hand at building his own telescopes like his artistic and unusual Garden Telescope, now a valued collector’s item. His ingenious work attracted the attention of legendary astrophysicist George Ellery Hale—the founder of the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin and the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California—who invited him to come west and join the challenging effort to create a new giant telescope.

Porter’s experience and skills made him a uniquely talented member of the telescope team at the California Institute of Technology from 1928-49, primarily working on what became the renowned 200-inch Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain in California, the largest in the world until 1975 and still one of the most productive telescopes ever built. While there, he also found time to guide much of the design of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles in 1931-34. During World War II Porter recruited amateur astronomers to make prisms for the war effort, and even contributed to the layout of China Lake Naval Weapons Test Station and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Porter’s regular articles and drawings for amateur telescope builders in The Scientific American magazine and the Amateur Telescope Making book series have inspired generations of amateur astronomers, who still revere him as the “patron saint” of telescope builders.