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

Once 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 pointed out in the hints for this obstacle.

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

Step 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 discover a relatively long post about Lyon and his life consisting of that his parents purchased a house on Paris Hill and Lyon later on lived there.

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

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

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

Now that weve thought about the points above we can begin guessing at the maker of the production and the car year. Keeping in mind that automobiles didnt substantially alter from one model year to the next at this time, if they did at all, were thinking the year according to years or half-decade is a practical approach to this challenge. At this point, turning to Google Image search is our next step. A look for “1920s cars and trucks” or “1910s vehicles” is a starting location. Nevertheless, those outcomes generally include examples of high-end cars and trucks of the time. Were looking for automobiles that might have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this point at the same time its valuable to have a list of American car makers of the 1910s and 1920s. Again, we might rely on Wikipedia for such a list or to any variety of antique cars and truck websites for such a list.

Based upon the lists of American vehicle manufacturers and what we know about Lyon, Ford is the most common guess as it was the most popular brand in the United States at the time and is still in the forefront of Americans minds today when they believe of car makers. Some adults will still think about Studebaker as an American vehicle manufacturer. Dodge is also a common guess as it pleases both the cost and appeal components of our quest. So now its a matter of comparing images of cars produced by those makers throughout the 1910s and early 1920s.

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

Step 1: Identify the aircraft and its historical significance.The image itself provides us a big tip. Do a quick Google search for “southern cross airplane” and the top result will be a Wikipedia page about the airplane. Its essential to consist of “plane” in the search due to the fact that browsing Google for just “southern cross” will put a video of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash tune Southern Cross at the top of the outcomes. Further down the search results page for “southern cross” youll find links to short articles about the constellation of the very same name, links to an energy company, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry. You wont see any reference to a plane in the first ten pages of Google search results when searching “southern cross.” In addition, “southern cross airplane” isnt even a term that Google recommends when you go into “southern cross.”.

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

As discussed above, the leading Google search outcome for “southern cross plane” is the Wikipedia page about the aircraft. Go through that page and youll find out that it was the very first aircraft to be flown from the United States to Australia.

There are a couple of ways to reach the answers. What Ive outlined below is the most direct way to get to the answers. (Thanks once again to Daniel Russells.
Joy of Search for motivating the advancement of search difficulties like this one).

Use Google Images to find images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge automobiles produced in those decades. Compare the pictures closely to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his vehicle and youll start 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). In all 3 cases, the Dodge examples are consistent with what we see in the image of Lyon in his automobile.

At this moment the process becomes a bit of guesswork followed by a procedure of comparison and elimination. There are some points to consider prior to thinking at what kind of car is in the photo. Heres a list of those points to think about:.
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 exceptional wealth, but probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based on Lyons monetary standing in addition to taking a look at the information of the automobile we can probably eliminate high-end brands from our uncertainty.
When we zoom-in on the vehicle we can see that it has some imperfections as the outcome of driving and or post-manufacturing modification. Noteworthy, there are what appears to be two wood bench seats behind the drivers seat. The back half of the body appears to be wood.

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the entire difficulty. To do this youll desire to enlarge the image discovered on the Maine Memory Networks short article about Lyon. They provide a zoomable version of the image. By zooming in on the image you can look at some important 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 automobile.

A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s vehicles” is a starting place. Compare the photos closely to those of the image of Lyon sitting in his car and youll begin to observe that the shape of the door in his vehicle 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 vehicles to the one of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck. To validate my details about the automobile I enlisted the aid of one the leading antique cars and truck preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

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