He signed up to sail on the ship Miranda as surveyor and artist for Frederick Cook's voyage to Greenland that next year.

[8] After his arctic adventures, Porter settled down in Port Clyde, Maine where he tried to start an art colony at Land's End but failed.

[8] Porter used these to build 16-inch (410 mm) "polar reflector" that he incorporated into the roof of a den he added on to his house in a design that allowed him to observe the sky from indoor heated comfort during long Maine winters.

He worked for the National Bureau of Standards producing prisms and experimenting with the silvering of mirrors during World War I.

[11] Porter moved back to Springfield, Vermont in 1919 to work at the Jones & Lamson Machine Company, of which James Hartness was president.

There he helped Hartness to produce an optical comparator,[12] an instrument for accurately checking the pitch, form, and lead of screw threads.

The members of this small group decided to form an astronomical club and December 7, 1923, was the first meeting of the Springfield Telescope Makers.

[14] In 1925 Albert G. Ingalls featured Porter and the Springfield Telescope Makers in two articles he wrote for Scientific American magazine.

1–3), a work that has been referred to as "the bible of telescope making",[16] helped to create lasting public interest in observational astronomy.

During the conceptual development of the telescope Porter produced extremely detailed cutaway drawings that were noted for their precision and beauty.