The Richard Porter collection reflects Porter's career as an electrical engineer, rocketry expert, and a corporate manager and consultant. Almost the entirety of this collection consists of materials related to his professional work. This includes correspondence, memoranda, meeting minutes, reports, notes, speeches, photographs, brochures, pamphlets, programs, magazines, newsletters, papers, articles, newspaper clippings, miscellaneous materials (directories, mailing lists, transcript, etc.), as well as a scrapbook. It is worth singling out a few of the aforementioned materials for their particular historical significance pertaining to the development of rocketry and space exploration. Some of the correspondence, memoranda and notes reveal the inner workings of Operation Paperclip: the U.S. plan to seek out, debrief, recruit and evacuate German rocket scientists from war-torn Germany to America. Additionally, other examples of correspondence and notes give candid appraisals of some key figures in the aerospace field, as well as to illustrate exchanges between Porter and such scientific luminaries as Carl Sagan, Wernher von Braun, Simon Ramo, Holger Toftoy, Fred Durant III, Edith Goddard and Clyde Tombaugh.