William A. Porter - Career Prior To E*TRADE

Career Prior To E*TRADE

Education
Porter received a B.A. from Adams State College, an M.S. in Physics from Kansas State University, and a Master's degree in Management (M.B.A.) from the Sloan Fellows program at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

First Company
Porter started Commercial Electronics Inc. in 1968 and developed the first commercial low-light night vision for electron microscopes and the first color low-light (night vision) broadcast television camera, a technology that's used today in all broadcast cameras. Porter sold Commercial Electronics to Warner Communications after the cancellation of a large order during the 1974 recession.

Patents
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), 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 Search
Under the project name The Search, Porter developed the first electronic diesel-electric locomotive "checkout system," whereby a testing device could be inserted into a locomotive engine. 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.

Management and Directorships
Porter has served as Chairman of Trelleborg Rubber Company, President of Tretorn Shoes, and President of Commercial Electronics Incorporated (see below). Porter was Director of Research and Planning for Textron from 1962–67, and Research Manager and Electrical Engineer of General Electric's Advanced Electronics Center at Cornell University from 1957-62. He was a physicist with the National Bureau of Standards from 1952-1957.