William A. Porter (1928–2015) was an American businessperson who, along with Bernard A. Newcomb founded the first electronic trading platform, E-Trade.
[1][2] After the success of E-Trade, Porter also co-founded International Securities Exchange with Marty Averbuch [3] and became the first chairman of ISE on his 70th birthday in 1998.
[5] Later in his life he donated money to businesses and nonprofits benefiting organic farming, recreation and community building on Kauai's North Shore.
[5][11] Porter holds 14 patents, having developed a number of electronic devices and processes—including for the aforementioned "first" shoulder-mounted-backpack broadcast color TV camera, the first infrared horizon sensor for satellite stabilization (prior to Sputnik),[5] and several other breakthroughs still in use today in a variety of fields—including, according to the 2000 CNN interview, devices used by the US military to this day.
The Southern Pacific and B&O Railroads suggested the system could improve operating capacity of the approximately 33,000 locomotive engines in the US by roughly 10 percent.
In 1992, The San Jose Business Journal named Trade*Plus the year's fastest growing private company in Silicon Valley.
He and his second wife Joan, who has one child from a previous marriage,[5] had homes in Portola Valley, California, and Princeville, Hawaii.
[16][17] My wife and I decided to give one major thing that would have significant meaning for humankind, and trying to leverage the Institute's technological capability through entrepreneurship for the betterment of the human condition is it.In 2007, the Porters gave 250,000 shares of E-Trade stock to Adams State College (worth approximately $5.8 million at the time), the largest gift in school's history.