He was also an entrepreneur, sharing the risk of major industrial developments with famous ironmaster Isaac Lowthian Bell and cable manufacturer Robert Stirling Newall.

Although known in his time for his 1833 patent "An improved method for separating silver from lead", a process that bears his name, he is best remembered today for his daguerreotype photographs taken in 1840.

In 1825 he became assay master (a tester of the purity of gold or silver coins) to the Greenwich Hospital Commissioners, back at Alston.

[6][7] The level of enrichment possible is limited by the lead-silver eutectic and typically the process stopped around 600 to 700 ounces per ton (approx 2%), so further separation is carried out by cupellation.

[9] Because of the very long exposure required, of ten minutes or more, the figure is assumed by Canada's Niagara Parks agency to be Pattinson himself.

[11] In 1841 Pattinson patented two other chemical processes, one for making lead carbonate,[12] and the other for manufacturing "magnesia alba", a white magnesium oxide.

[12] His lead oxychloride process became a profitable industrial reality in 1850, when Pattinson and his partners (and sons-in-law) Isaac Lowthian Bell and Robert Benson Bowman established a chemical company at Washington, County Durham.

[13][14] Under an 1850 Indenture,[15] Charles William Vane, Marquis of Londonderry, Pattinson and Bell declared themselves "chemical manufacturers and co-partners in trade".

[17] Pattinson married Phoebe Walton on 25 December 1815, having been baptised by the vicar of Alston, Benjamin Jackson, as a member of the Church of England on 23 December 1815 in a public house, the Angel Inn at Alston, as Phoebe's family would not accept marriage to a "Quaker".

In addition, all three brothers-in-law were members of Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club and the Natural History Society of Northumberland.