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

Based on the lists of American vehicle manufacturers and what we understand about Lyon, Ford is the most typical guess as it was the most popular brand in the United States at the time and is still in the leading edge of Americans minds today when they believe of car producers. Now its a matter of comparing photos of cars and trucks produced by those manufacturers during the 1910s and early 1920s.

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the entire difficulty. To do this youll wish to enlarge the photo discovered 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 details consisting of the shape of the front door on the vehicle, the shape of the front of the vehicle, and a little badge on the front of the automobile.

Now that weve considered the points above we can start guessing at the maker of the production and the vehicle year. Noting that cars didnt substantially change from one design year to the next at this time, if they did at all, were guessing the year according to years or half-decade is a viable method to this challenge. At this point, turning to Google Image search is our next step. A search for “1920s cars” or “1910s automobiles” is a starting place. However, those outcomes typically feature examples of high-end automobiles of the time. Were searching for automobiles that could have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this moment at the same time its valuable to have a list of American vehicle manufacturers of the 1910s and 1920s. Again, we might rely on Wikipedia for such a list or to any variety of antique automobile sites for such a list.

Step 2: Identify who flew on the airplane.
On that exact same Wikipedia page youll discover that the 4 members of the flight crew were Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, Harry Lyon, and James Warner.

At this point the process ends up being a bit of uncertainty followed by a procedure of contrast and elimination. There are some indicate think about prior to thinking at what sort of automobile is in the photo. Heres a list of those indicate think about:.
The image was taken in 1927, a year before the flight of the Southern Cross.
From checking out about him, we understand that Lyon was not a man of remarkable wealth, but most likely middle to upper-middle class.
Based on Lyons financial standing in addition to looking at the details of the cars and truck we can probably get rid of high-end brands from our uncertainty.
When we zoom-in on the car we can see that it has some imperfections as the result of driving and or post-manufacturing modification. Notable, there are what appears to be two wooden bench seats behind the drivers seat. The back half of the body appears to be wood.

A search for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s cars” is a starting location. Compare the photos closely to those of the image of Lyon sitting in his car and youll start to observe 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 invested at least ten hours comparing images of cars and trucks to the one of Lyon sitting in his vehicle. To confirm my details about the vehicle I enlisted the aid of one the top antique automobile preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

There are a couple of ways to come to the answers. What Ive laid out listed below is the most direct way to get to the answers. (Thanks again to Daniel Russells.
Delight of Search for inspiring the advancement of search challenges like this one).

Usage Google Images to discover images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge automobiles produced in those decades. Compare the pictures carefully to those of the photo of Lyon sitting in his vehicle and youll start to discover that the shape of the door in his car doesnt 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 image of Lyon in his vehicle.

Disclosure: I spent at least 10 hours comparing images of vehicles to the one of Lyon being in his car. To confirm my information about the cars and truck I employed the aid of one the leading antique cars and truck preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig. Jeff is a good friend of mine and the manager of Bob Bahres charming automobile collection housed on Paris Hill in Paris, Maine. You can find out more about the collection here..

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

On Tuesday I shared
a search challenge and wrote that you might email me if you wanted the answers to the questions in the challenge. I got
a lot more emails than I thought I would. And some people I emailed the responses to composed back requesting more information about the process of discovering the answers. So the other day early morning I hung out writing out the procedure of discovering the responses to Tuesdays search challenge. If you missed out on the difficulty, you can
find it here. The solution is detailed below..

As soon as youve determined who the members of the flight team were, the next action is to determine which one had a connection to Maine. 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 computers) to browse each page for the word “Maine.” Just the pages for Charles Kingsford Smith and Harry Lyon consist of 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 site which is discussed in the tips for this difficulty.

Do a quick Google search for “southern cross aircraft” and the leading outcome will be a Wikipedia page about the plane. Its important to consist of “plane” in the search because searching 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 articles about the constellation of the exact same name, links to an energy business, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry.

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

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

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

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 relatively long post about Lyon and his life including that his parents bought a home on Paris Hill and Lyon later on lived there.

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