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

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

Now that weve considered the points above we can start guessing at the producer of the automobile and the production year. Noting that automobiles didnt considerably change from one design year to the next at this time, if they did at all, were guessing the year according to decade or half-decade is a feasible approach to this challenge. A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s cars and trucks” is a starting location.

As soon as youve identified who the members of the flight team were, the next action is to figure out which one had a connection to Maine. Lyons page consists of “Maine” as part of a link to the Maine Memory Networks website which is discussed in the tips for this obstacle.

Disclosure: I invested at least ten hours comparing images of cars and trucks to the one of Lyon sitting in his vehicle. To validate my information about the car I enlisted the assistance of one the leading antique automobile preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

Step 1: Identify the airplane and its historic significance.The image itself gives us a huge hint. Do a quick Google look for “southern cross plane” and the top result will be a Wikipedia page about the airplane. Its important to include “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 results. Further down the search results page for “southern cross” youll discover links to short articles about the constellation of the exact same name, links to an energy business, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry. You wont see any referral to an airplane in the first ten pages of Google search results when searching “southern cross.” “southern cross airplane” isnt even a term that Google recommends when you get in “southern cross.”.

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

Step 4: Find the reference to an automobile. At the very 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 have to view it there)..

Action 2: Identify who flew on the airplane.
On that very 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.

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the whole challenge. To do this youll wish to increase the size of the photo discovered on the Maine Memory Networks post about Lyon. They supply a zoomable variation of the image. By focusing on the image you can look at some essential information including the shape of the front door on the vehicle, the shape of the front of the automobile, and a little badge on the front of the cars and truck.

Usage Google Images to discover images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge automobiles produced in those years. Compare the photos closely to those of the image of Lyon sitting in his automobile and youll start to notice that the shape of the door in his cars and truck does not match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). In all 3 cases, the Dodge examples are constant with what we see in the picture of Lyon in his car.

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 article about Lyon and his life including that his parents purchased a home on Paris Hill and Lyon later lived there.

At this point the procedure ends up being a little bit of uncertainty followed by a procedure of comparison and removal. There are some indicate consider before rating what type of vehicle is in the image. Heres a list of those indicate think about:.
First, the image 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 remarkable wealth, however most likely middle to upper-middle class.
Based on Lyons monetary standing in addition to looking at the information of the car we can most likely remove high-end brand names from our guesswork.
When we zoom-in on the automobile we can see that it has some imperfections as the outcome of driving and or post-manufacturing adjustment. Noteworthy, there are what appears to be two wooden bench seats behind the drivers seat. The back half of the body seems wood also.

A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s automobiles” is a starting place. Compare the photos closely to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his car and youll begin to discover that the shape of the door in his car does not match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). Disclosure: I spent at least ten hours comparing images of automobiles to the one of Lyon sitting in his car. To validate my details about the cars and truck I enlisted the assistance of one the leading antique car preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

Based on the lists of American automobile producers 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 forefront of Americans minds today when they believe of vehicle makers. Now its a matter of comparing photos of cars and trucks produced by those makers during the 1910s and early 1920s.

By zooming in on the image you can look at some important information including the shape of the front door on the cars and truck, the shape of the front of the cars and truck, and a little badge on the front of the car.

There are a couple of ways to show up at the answers. What Ive laid out listed below is the most direct method to get to the responses. (Thanks once again to Daniel Russells.
Delight of Search for inspiring the advancement of search difficulties like this one).

On Tuesday I shared
If you desired the answers to the questions in the obstacle, a search challenge and composed that you could email me. I got
a lot more emails than I thought I would. And some people I emailed the answers to composed back requesting more details about the process of discovering the answers. So yesterday early morning I hung around composing out the process of finding the responses to Tuesdays search obstacle. You can if you missed the obstacle
find it here. The option is detailed below..

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