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

There are a couple of ways to reach the answers. What Ive outlined listed below is the most direct way to get to the responses. (Thanks again to Daniel Russells.
Happiness of Search for inspiring the development of search difficulties like this one).

Based on the lists of American car makers and what we understand about Lyon, Ford is the most common 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 consider auto manufacturers. Some grownups will still believe of Studebaker as an American vehicle manufacturer. Dodge is likewise a typical guess as it pleases both the rate and popularity components of our quest. Now its a matter of comparing pictures of vehicles produced by those producers throughout the 1910s and early 1920s.

Do a fast Google search for “southern cross plane” and the top outcome will be a Wikipedia page about the aircraft. Its important to include “aircraft” in the search because searching Google for just “southern cross” will put a music video of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song Southern Cross at the top of the results. Further down the search results page for “southern cross” youll find links to articles about the constellation of the very same name, links to an energy company, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry.

To do this youll want to increase the size of the image discovered on the Maine Memory Networks short article about Lyon. By zooming in on the image you can look at some crucial details consisting of the shape of the front door on the automobile, the shape of the front of the car, and a little badge on the front of the cars and truck.

A search for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning place. Compare the images carefully to those of the photo of Lyon sitting in his vehicle and youll begin to discover that the shape of the door in his automobile does not match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). Disclosure: I invested at least ten hours comparing images of automobiles to the one of Lyon sitting in his vehicle. To validate my info about the automobile I got the help of one the top antique car preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

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

At this moment the process becomes a little bit of guesswork followed by a process of comparison and elimination. There are some points to consider before thinking at what type of vehicle is in the picture. Heres a list of those indicate think about:.
The photo was taken in 1927, a year prior to the flight of the Southern Cross.
From checking out him, we understand that Lyon was not a male of extraordinary wealth, however probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based on Lyons monetary standing as well as looking at the details of the vehicle we can probably remove luxury brands from our uncertainty.
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. Significant, there are what appears to be 2 wooden bench seats behind the chauffeurs seat. The back half of the body appears to be wooden as well.

Action 2: Identify who flew on the plane.
Also on that same Wikipedia page youll learn that the 4 members of the flight team were Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, Harry Lyon, and James Warner.

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

Step 4: Find the recommendation to a cars and truck. At the extremely bottom of this Maine Memory Network page about Harry Lyon youll see an image of Lyon being in an automobile in his driveway in 1927. (The image is copyrighted so youll have to view it there)..

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

The next step is to figure out which one had a connection to Maine as soon as youve identified who the members of the flight team were. To do this, open the Wikipedia page for each member of the flight crew then utilize keyboard commands of CTRL+F (Windows computer systems) or COMMAND+F (Mac computers) to browse each page for the word “Maine.” Only the pages for Charles Kingsford Smith and Harry Lyon include a match for “Maine” and the match on Smiths page is just 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 discussed in the hints for this challenge.

Now that weve thought about the points above we can begin thinking at the maker of the car and the production year. Keeping in mind that automobiles didnt considerably alter 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 practical approach to this obstacle. At this point, relying on Google Image search is our next step. A search for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s automobiles” is a starting place. Those results generally include examples of luxury vehicles of the time. Were searching for cars that could have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this point in the process its helpful to have a list of American automobile makers of the 1910s and 1920s. Again, we may turn to Wikipedia for such a list or to any variety of antique cars and truck websites for such a list.

Use Google Images to find pictures of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge cars produced in those decades. 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 vehicle doesnt match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). The front of Lyons automobile is likewise more rounded than that of the Fords and Studebakers made at the same time. When we look at the radiator caps of the vehicles, a last information is on the hood of the car. In all three cases, the Dodge examples are consistent with what we see in the photo of Lyon in his vehicle. The last response is a Dodge Touring cars and truck produced around 1919 (take a year or offer) that was modified in the back.

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

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

You could have followed the tip about using the Maine Memory Networks site then headed there to do a search within the website for referrals to Harry Lyon.

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