A Brief History of Stellafane

By Maryann Arrien, November, 1994

Back in 1920, the town of Springfield Vermont was known worldwide for its machine tool industry. It was in this thriving community of skilled craftsmen and machinists that Russell W. Porter launched the amateur telescope making movement at the Jones & Lamson Company with a group of 16 people. They constructed the pink clubhouse in the fall of 1923 and, that December, established themselves as The Springfield Telescope Makers with Porter as president. All members of the society were required to make a mirror suitable for mounting in a telescope.

Porter was a gifted artist and engineer who encouraged the telescope makers to use their imagination and resourcefulness to scour the junk yards and other unusual sources for parts for their telescopes. To this day amateurs who enter their scopes in competition are rewarded for utilizing the imaginative, cost-effective solution. With the same spirit with which he explored the Arctic, he took the group on hikes with telescopes in tow to unlock the mysteries of the heavens from Mount Ephraim and Hawks Mountain.

The clubhouse was named "Stellar-Fane" (Latin for "shrine to the stars"), but it was later contracted to "Stellafane". The Springfield [mount] Telescope was invented by Porter and exhibited at the first official Stellafane convention on July 3, 1926 to a gathering of 20 people, including Albert G. Ingalls -- the editor of Scientific American. Porter also produced the Garden Telescope, a solar telescope, the Polar Cassegrain, the transit telescope and of course the famous Porter Turret Telescope in 1930. Governor James Hartness, friend to Porter and inventor of the Hartness Turret Telescope, was a long standing supporter of the club. It was through his influence that Porter was chosen by the Cal Tech team to work on the 200 inch Hale Telescope at Palomar.

In recent years, as many as 1,600 "telescope nuts" have traveled to the Breezy Hill site to continue the amateur telescope making tradition of meeting at Stellafane to admire what craftsmanship the hand of the amateur can attain to "unlock the wonders of the heavens".