What Car Did Harry Lyon Drive? – The Answer to Tuesday’s Search Challenge

Do a quick Google search for “southern cross airplane” and the top result will be a Wikipedia page about the aircraft. Its important to consist of “plane” in the search since browsing Google for simply “southern cross” will put a music video of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash tune Southern Cross at the top of the outcomes. Even more down the search outcomes page for “southern cross” youll discover links to posts about the constellation of the exact same name, links to an energy company, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry.

Action 4: Find the recommendation to a car. At the really bottom of this Maine Memory Network page about Harry Lyon youll see a photo of Lyon sitting in a vehicle in his driveway in 1927. (The image is copyrighted so youll need to see it there)..

Action 3: Find the recommendation to Paris Hill. If you follow the link to the Maine Memory Network from the Wikipedia page about Harry Lyon, youll find a fairly long short article about Lyon and his life including that his moms and dads bought a house on Paris Hill and Lyon later on lived there.

A search for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning place. Compare the pictures carefully to those of the image of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck and youll start to observe that the shape of the door in his car doesnt match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). Disclosure: I invested at least 10 hours comparing images of vehicles to the one of Lyon sitting in his car. To verify my information about the cars and truck I enlisted the aid of one the top antique cars and truck preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

The next action is to figure out which one had a connection to Maine when youve determined who the members of the flight team were. To do this, open the Wikipedia page for each member of the flight crew then use keyboard commands of CTRL+F (Windows computer systems) or COMMAND+F (Mac computer systems) to browse each page for the word “Maine.” Only the pages for Charles Kingsford Smith and Harry Lyon consist of a match for “Maine” and the match on Smiths page is only discovered in the context of the word “remained.” Lyons page consists of “Maine” as part of a link to the Maine Memory Networks website which is mentioned in the hints for this challenge.

Additionally, you might have followed the tip about utilizing the Maine Memory Networks website then headed there to do a search within the site for referrals to Harry Lyon.

Disclosure: I spent at least ten hours comparing images of automobiles to the one of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck. To validate my details about the car I got the aid of one the top antique cars and truck preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

As pointed out above, the top Google search results page for “southern cross airplane” is the Wikipedia page about the airplane. Read through that page and youll find out that it was the very first aircraft to be flown from the United States to Australia.

At this point the process ends up being a bit of guesswork followed by a procedure of comparison and elimination. There are some points to think about prior to guessing at what type of car remains in the image. Heres a list of those points to think about:.
The image was taken in 1927, a year prior to the flight of the Southern Cross.
From checking out about him, we know that Lyon was not a man of extraordinary wealth, but most likely middle to upper-middle class.
Based upon Lyons financial standing along with looking at the details of the car we can most likely get rid of high-end brand names from our guesswork.
When we zoom-in on the car we can see that it has some imperfections as the outcome of driving and or post-manufacturing modification. Notable, there are what appears to be 2 wooden bench seats behind the chauffeurs seat. The back half of the body appears to be wood.

There are a couple of ways to reach the responses. What Ive detailed below is the most direct method to get to the responses. (Thanks once again to Daniel Russells.
Pleasure of Search for inspiring the development of search difficulties like this one).

Now that weve considered the points above we can start thinking at the manufacturer of the production and the car year. Noting that automobiles didnt considerably change from one design year to the next at this time, if they did at all, were thinking the year according to decade or half-decade is a feasible approach to this difficulty. At this moment, relying on Google Image search is our next action. A look for “1920s cars” or “1910s vehicles” is a beginning location. However, those outcomes generally include examples of high-end automobiles of the time. Were looking for cars and trucks that could have been owned by middle to upper-middle class individuals of the time. At this moment at the same time its handy to have a list of American automobile producers of the 1910s and 1920s. Again, we might turn to Wikipedia for such a list or to any variety of antique vehicle websites for such a list.

Based on the lists of American car makers and what we know about Lyon, Ford is the most typical guess as it was the most popular brand name in the United States at the time and is still in the leading edge of Americans minds today when they think of car manufacturers. Now its a matter of comparing pictures of vehicles produced by those manufacturers throughout the 1910s and early 1920s.

Usage Google Images to discover images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge automobiles produced in those years. Compare the images closely to those of the picture of Lyon being in his vehicle and youll begin to notice that the shape of the door in his cars and truck doesnt match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). The front of Lyons vehicle is likewise more rounded than that of the Fords and Studebakers made at the exact same time. When we look at the radiator caps of the lorries, a final information is on the hood of the cars and truck. In all three cases, the Dodge examples are consistent with what we see in the image of Lyon in his car. The last response is a Dodge Touring car produced around 1919 (offer or take a year) that was customized in the back.

By zooming in on the image you can look at some crucial details consisting of the shape of the front door on the cars and truck, the shape of the front of the car, and a little badge on the front of the automobile.

Action 5: Identify the automobile. This is the hardest part of the entire challenge. To do this youll want to expand the picture discovered on the Maine Memory Networks article about Lyon. They supply a zoomable version of the image. By zooming in on the image you can take a look at some crucial information including the shape of the front door on the automobile, the shape of the front of the vehicle, and a little badge on the front of the automobile.

Step 2: Identify who flew on the airplane.
Likewise on that same Wikipedia page youll find out that the four members of the flight crew were Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, Harry Lyon, and James Warner.

On Tuesday I shared
a search difficulty and composed that you might email me if you wanted the answers to the questions in the challenge. I got
Yesterday morning I spent time composing out the process of discovering the responses to Tuesdays search obstacle. If you missed out on the obstacle, you can
discover it here. The option is detailed listed below..

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