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

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

A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s automobiles” is a starting place. Compare the pictures carefully to those of the photo of Lyon sitting in his car and youll begin to discover 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). Disclosure: I spent at least ten hours comparing images of cars to the one of Lyon sitting in his automobile. To confirm my details about the automobile I got the help of one the top antique cars and truck preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

Step 4: Find the reference to a car. At the very bottom of this Maine Memory Network page about Harry Lyon youll see an image of Lyon sitting in an automobile in his driveway in 1927. (The image is copyrighted so youll need to view it there)..

Do a quick Google search for “southern cross airplane” and the leading outcome will be a Wikipedia page about the plane. Its crucial to consist of “aircraft” in the search due to the fact that searching Google for just “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 results page for “southern cross” youll discover links to posts about the constellation of the very same name, links to an energy company, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry.

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

Usage Google Images to find images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge cars and trucks produced in those years. Compare the images carefully to those of the image of Lyon being in his vehicle and youll begin to notice that the shape of the door in his automobile does not match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). The front of Lyons car is also more rounded than that of the Fords and Studebakers made at the same time. When we look at the radiator caps of the cars, a final detail is on the hood of the car. In all 3 cases, the Dodge examples follow what we see in the image of Lyon in his car. The last response is a Dodge Touring car produced around 1919 (take a year or offer) that was customized in the back.

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

On Tuesday I shared
If you desired the answers to the concerns in the difficulty, a search obstacle and composed that you could email me. I got
a lot more emails than I thought I would. And some individuals I emailed the responses to wrote back asking for more information about the procedure of discovering the answers. Yesterday early morning I spent time composing out the process of discovering the answers to Tuesdays search challenge. You can if you missed the difficulty
find it here. The solution is detailed below..

As soon as youve identified who the members of the flight crew were, the next step is to figure out which one had a connection to Maine. To do this, open the Wikipedia page for each member of the flight team then utilize keyboard commands of CTRL+F (Windows computers) or COMMAND+F (Mac computers) 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 just found in the context of the word “stayed.” Lyons page consists of “Maine” as part of a link to the Maine Memory Networks website which is discussed in the tips for this difficulty.

There are a few methods to get to the responses. What Ive detailed below is the most direct method to get to the answers. (Thanks again to Daniel Russells.
Delight of Search for motivating the advancement of search obstacles like this one).

Based upon the lists of American car manufacturers and what we understand 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 think about automobile manufacturers. Some grownups will still believe of Studebaker as an American vehicle producer. Dodge is also a typical guess as it pleases both the cost and appeal components of our mission. So now its a matter of comparing photos of vehicles produced by those manufacturers during the 1910s and early 1920s.

At this moment the procedure becomes a bit of guesswork followed by a process of contrast and removal. There are some indicate consider before rating what kind of automobile is in the picture. Heres a list of those indicate consider:.
The picture 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 man of extraordinary wealth, but probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based on Lyons monetary standing as well as taking a look at the information of the vehicle we can most likely eliminate high-end brands from our uncertainty.
When we zoom-in on the cars and truck we can see that it has some imperfections as the outcome of driving and or post-manufacturing adjustment. Significant, there are what seems two wood bench seats behind the motorists seat. The back half of the body appears to be wood.

Action 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 find a fairly long post about Lyon and his life including that his moms and dads purchased a house on Paris Hill and Lyon later lived there.

Disclosure: I invested at least 10 hours comparing images of cars to the one of Lyon sitting in his vehicle. To verify my details about the car I enlisted the help of one the top antique vehicle preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

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

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the whole challenge. To do this youll desire to expand the image found on the Maine Memory Networks article about Lyon. Luckily, they supply a zoomable version of the image. By zooming in on the image you can take a look at some important 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 vehicle.

Now that weve considered the points above we can begin thinking at the manufacturer of the production and the vehicle 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 technique to this obstacle. At this moment, relying on Google Image search is our next action. A search for “1920s cars and trucks” or “1910s cars and trucks” is a beginning location. Nevertheless, those results typically feature examples of high-end cars and trucks of the time. Were looking for cars that could have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this point at the same time its practical to have a list of American vehicle makers of the 1910s and 1920s. Again, we might turn to Wikipedia for such a list or to any number of antique automobile sites for such a list.

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