Early career Within a month of his graduation, Patton accepted a position in 1904 in the Field Corps of the
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, which at the time was an entirely civilian organization. He began fieldwork in August 1904, serving along the
United States East Coast as a civilian junior officer aboard the Coast and Geodetic Survey
survey launch USC&GS Hydrographer; during his tour aboard
Hydrographer, he participated in survey work to update the
United States Coast Pilots publications and accompanied a shore party as it conducted
topographic surveys in
Virginia. In 1906 he reported aboard the Coast and Geodetic Survey ship
USC&GS Thomas R. Gedney for survey work along the southeast coast of the
Territory of Alaska. Patton was assigned to the U.S. Navy's
Bureau of Navigation, with which he took up duty at the
United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., as Assistant in the Time Service and Nautical Instrument Division. He became chief of the division on 1 March 1918. The division was responsible for purchasing and distributing to U.S. Navy vessels all navigational instruments except
compasses and compass fixtures; for the cleaning, compensation rating, and issue of all U.S. Navy
marine chronometers; and with sending out the daily time signal by
telegraph and
radio. Before World War I broke out, the U.S. Navy had obtained most of its navigational instruments from foreign manufacturers, and their production in the United States had only become a major effort since then, making the division's efforts to procure such instruments in a timely manner a challenging task. Patton received a promotion to
lieutenant commander on 1 October 1918. After the war ended on 11 November 1918, he remained on duty in the Navy until 31 March 1919, when he received an
honorable discharge.
Nautical chart production reforms Patton returned to the Coast and Geodetic Survey on 1 April 1919 to resume duties as a commissioned officer in the Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps. His first assignment upon his return was as Chief of the Chart Division, which at the time was under criticism for the length of time it took to produce new or updated
nautical charts after the completion of field survey work. Until his arrival, Coast and Geodetic Survey officials viewed this delay as an inevitable consequence of the need for painstaking work to ensure the accuracy of new or updated charts, but Patton instituted a number of reforms – including a complete reorganization of the division, the adoption of a comprehensive production schedule for charts, and the introduction of more efficient techniques and equipment – that allowed the Chart Division to produce its charts in one-third the time it required before he took charge without any sacrifice of quality.
Shoreline preservation work In 1921, the
State of New Jersey's Board of Commerce and Navigation asked
United States Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to assign a member of the
United States Department of Commerce to serve on an engineering advisory board created to study
beach erosion in New Jersey and recommend better means of protecting valuable coastal areas from erosion. The Coast and Geodetic Survey was a component of the Department of Commerce, and Patton had conducted extensive research into beach erosion since taking charge of the Chart Division, so Hoover appointed him to serve on the advisory board while continuing his duties as chief of the Chart Division. Patton played an active role on the board, which published two reports – in 1922 and 1924 – which provided the State of New Jersey with information that allowed it to play an active role in protecting its beaches from erosion. While remaining Chief of the Chart Division, Patton became a member of the
National Research Council's Committee on Shoreline Investigations in 1925, and in 1926 he became the committee's Chairman. The Committee suspected that other states in addition to New Jersey faced beach erosion problems and that beach erosion might constitute a national problem for the United States that therefore was a matter of interest to the National Research Council. During Patton's tenure on the committee, it found that almost every state along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts faced beach erosion problems and struggled to cope with them independently. In order to bring together the funding and personnel necessary to address the beach erosion problem on a national scale, the Committee on Shoreline Investigations and the
governors of the states along the East and Gulf Coasts organized through joint action the
American Shore and Beach Preservation Association in December 1926, with Patton playing a major role in its formation and serving as its secretary-treasurer until June 1929 and as one of its directors until his death in 1937. Possessing extensive knowledge of beach erosion issues and shoreline preservation efforts – he was considered one of the foremost experts on the subject in the United States – as well as of the activities and records of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Patton frequently served as an expert witness in litigation concerning riparian property boundaries.
Director The first director of the Coast and Geodetic Survey,
Colonel Ernest Lester Jones, died on 9 April 1929. Patton, who had by then reached the rank of
captain, saw his long tour as chief of the Chart Division finally come to an end on 29 April 1929, when Herbert Hoover, by then
President of the United States, selected him to succeed Jones as director. During his tour as director, which lasted until his death in 1937, Patton continued and accelerated reforms Jones had begun to modernize the Coast and Geodetic Survey's surveying methods and equipment and increase the efficiency of its operations, in many cases championing the adoption and testing of experimental methods that proved successful as their use was refined and expanded. After the onset of the
Great Depression, Patton procured emergency funds to expand the Coast and Geodetic Survey's coastal operations between 1933 and 1935, using the expansion as a vehicle to both put unemployed Americans, especially engineers, to work and to catch up on a backlog of urgently needed survey work that had been awaiting the Coast and Geodetic Survey's attention. In 1936, Patton received a promotion to
rear admiral, becoming the first officer of the Coast and Geodetic Survey Corps to reach
flag rank. ==Personal and professional life==