The Porter Garden Telescope Team

FRED SCHLEIPMAN

Engineer, machinist and inventor, lives and works high on a hill in Vermont. At eighty-five, he splits and stacks his own wood. His towering woodpiles will outlast the pyramids but they don't hold a candle to the creations that are born in his shops. Templates for the guidance of brain surgery probes. Turbines which are veritable titanium roses, accurate to tenths of a thousandth of an inch. Bearings that float on liquid helium spinning at one million rpm. Tungsten delivery systems for radiation dosage control. A dilating prosthetic eye. And the Porter Garden Telescope.

RUSS SCHLEIPMAN

A graduate of Exeter and Dartmouth, lives in Boston. A freelance advertising photographer since 1980, he travels widely, and markets his own work. He jumped at the opportunity to share his marketing and communication skills with this venture, and to collaborate with his father. He has a discerning eye for design and fine art, so reintroducing the world to the Porter Telescope is a labor of love.

BERT WILLARD

The biographer of Russell Porter and an accomplished optical engineer, joined The Springfield Telescope Makers, founded by Porter, as a high school freshman. He now holds two degrees from the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, and holds a position at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he designs optical systems for laser applications. As curator and archivist of the Springfield Telescope Maker's museum, he was instrumental in engineering the loan of an original Garden Telescope for scanning and patterning. We owe him inestimable thanks.

DAVE NUGENT

A pattern maker of extraordinary talents, learned to draw, sculpt and paint from his mother, whom he describes as "an exceptional artist". He studied metallurgical engineering at The Colorado School of Mines, and has worked in foundries as both an engineer and quality manager. His work for numerous foundries has evolved from industrial to decorative architectural design and fine art. He has been decorated for his patterning of custom door hardware and his clients include nine state capitols, many US government buildings, Bon Jovi, Bill Gates, Dick Cavett and the Japanese Diet Building.

JIM DALEY

A superb optical engineer, skilled machinist and active long-time member of the Springfield Telescope makers, has 39 years of experience in the field of optical research. Having made many patterns for various amateur projects, Jim is intimately familiar with the process of casting bronze. An avid amateur astronomer, he has a backyard observatory where he uses his carefully crafted homemade instruments to carry out his research on double stars. Jim has selflessly given much time and expertise and labor to this project, especially with regard to the optics and their design.