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The Thermometer Man of Cape Cod
By Kimberlee Strohm, Standard-Times correspondent
WAREHAM -- What better person to deliver speeches on "thermometermania" than the man who is recorded as having the world's largest collection of thermometers.
The sign outside Richard Porter's walk-out basement in Onset, where he displays close to 3,000 thermometers, reads, "Welcome to the World's Only Thermometer Museum." His collection is listed in Ripley's Believe It or Not as the largest worldwide, running far ahead of the second largest collector, the president of the Thermometer Collector's Club in California, who has 600 thermometers.
"I don't have a lot of competition," Mr. Porter, vice president of the club, said with a grin.
Despite the welcoming sign, the entrance to the museum, housed in Porter's winterized cottage on the banks of Buzzards Bay, does little to prepare visitors for what awaits them inside.
Along every inch of every wall, covering every flat surface and even hanging from the ceiling, are thermometers in all shapes and sizes, row after row after row.
All of them are grouped by their similarities. The oldest, rarest and most valuable are displayed in glass cases. They all have their own stories, which the congenial curator is happy to share with visitors.
Whether it's the thermometers held by three-dimensional elves, owls or butterflies, attached to miniature Swiss chalets, on religious figurines or paintings of ships, metal ships' wheels or on recognizable monuments like the Eiffel tower or the Statue of Liberty, Mr. Porter can recite some tidbit of history relating to each one. It may be a brief history or the place of its acquisition and its price. He remembers it all.
One story involves a group of thermometers from Wexler Co. of Freeport, N.Y. When that company went out of business, it sent the collection of older-model thermometers to Porter in exchange for using his museum as a repository. Another group of 83 thermometers triggers the story of the 83-year-old woman from Illinois who sent her collection to Porter for safe keeping.
"She said she had collected one for every year of her life and was too old to collect any more, so she wanted them somewhere they could be admired," Mr. Porter said.
The cost to him: the price of postage from Illinois.
Along with manning his museum, which runs on the motto "Always open -- Always free," Mr. Porter travels the country delivering speeches to Rotary clubs, schools, science groups and the elderly on the thermometer, speeches he entitles "Thermometermania" because, he admits, that's what he has.
"I'm always looking to add to my collection. My latest goal is to have 3,000. I got a few more just the other day, and did I tell you I had two hand-delivered from Turkey?
"These people visited the museum about two years ago and told me to expect a thermometer from Turkey. Sure enough -- this is an interesting story -- friends of theirs were visiting them from New Jersey and brought two thermometers back with them. Then two of their friends from Wareham were visiting them and brought the thermometers to me," Mr. Porter said.
His prized thermometer, the oldest in his collection, is a French woodcut of a hunter and a deer under a tree where a thermometer is embedded. It is more than 150 years old; he dates it to 1830. He bought it at a Wellfleet flea market for $4.
His second-favorite is a 100-year-old Victorian thermometer owned by his grandmother.
One of the difficulties Mr. Porter has run into over the years is researching and valuing his collection because there is so little written on the subject.
So far, what information he has gathered came off the Internet and from a 1915 pamphlet written by the Taylor Corp., a large thermometer manufacturer that is no longer in business.
"I went to speak in Stoughton once, and a gentlemen said he went to the library to look up information on thermometers so he could come up with some questions to stump me. He told me the only information he could find was an article I wrote," Mr. Porter said.
Mr. Porter receives about 100 visitors annually and is happy to accommodate anyone on most any day of the week. It is best to call ahead. Mr. Porter can be reached at 295-5504.
Staff photos by Mike Valeri (Top to bottom): 1) Richard Porter is called the Thermometer Man of Cape Cod, and one can see why. Here he holds mother of pearl thermometers, which were popular in the 1920s and '30s. 2) Mr. Porter's unique museum is jammed with thermometers of all descriptions. 3) Porter's oldest thermometer, circa 1830s, features the Fahrenheit and Reaumur scales, which is still used in parts of France. 4) Left: This collection of thermometers was used in the movie "U-Turn," starring Sean Penn and Nick Nolte. Right: The thermometer on the far left is the original device used in the original vat of the Busch Beer Co. in St. Louis, Mo. |  |
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