- Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 870-881. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
- Co-founded (w/William Swanson, Joseph W. Engel) Rex Film Co., formed in 1909.
- He has directed four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Life of an American Fireman (1903), The Great Train Robbery (1903), Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906) and Tess of the Storm Country (1914).
- Porter's death in 1941 passed virtually unnoticed in Hollywood. He is interred in a private mausoleum at Husband Cemetery in Somerset, PA.
- As chief director and cameraman for the Edison Studio, Porter never made more than $85 a week. As an independent producer (after 1909) and developer of the Simplex movie projector, he eventually became a millionaire.
- Was a co-founder of the Famous Players Film Company (1912). At this studio Porter was one of the first American directors to regularly make feature-length films.
- Porter withdrew from movie-making in 1915. He sold his share of Famous Players to Adolph Zukor for $800,000 and became president of the Precision Machine Co., manufacturer of the Simplex movie projectors. He was well-off enough to retire at 55 in 1925, but lost much of his fortune in the 1929 Wall Street crash.
- Trained as an electrician, Porter was a keen techno geek rather than an artist or entertainer. As a hobby he experimented with systems for sound, color and 3-D in films, but produced no practical results. Business partner Adolph Zukor complained that Porter was more comfortable around machines than with people.
- His daughter Mary E. Porter died prematurely as she only lived for 28 days.
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