After graduating, he taught at universities and public schools in Wisconsin, Ohio, Alabama, Kansas, Missouri and Connecticut.

During World War II he was an instructor at the Advanced Navigation School for Army-Air Force pilots at Selman Field in Louisiana.

He was so successful that the president of Kansas State University included Houston's team in his annual science research summary, and the Physics Department donated equipment to the group.

He also published a regional newsletter called The Great Plains Observer that was circulated to several thousand amateur astronomers.

The hoax soon gained worldwide attention in May 1959 when a similar theory was proposed by Soviet scientist Iosif Shklovsky in an interview with Komsomol Pravda.

"[5] The main-belt asteroid 3031 Houston, discovered by Edward Bowell at Anderson Mesa Station in 1984, was named in his honor.