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

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

There are a couple of methods to reach 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 obstacles like this one).

Based on the lists of American automobile producers 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 think of automobile makers. Now its a matter of comparing images of cars and trucks produced by those producers throughout the 1910s and early 1920s.

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

As soon as youve recognized who the members of the flight team were, the next step is to figure out which one had a connection to Maine. Lyons page includes “Maine” as part of a link to the Maine Memory Networks site which is discussed in the hints for this obstacle.

At this point the process ends up being a little bit of guesswork followed by a procedure of contrast and elimination. There are some indicate think about prior to thinking at what kind of cars and truck is in the image. Heres a list of those points to think about:.
First, the photo was taken in 1927, a year before the flight of the Southern Cross.
From checking out him, we know that Lyon was not a guy of extraordinary wealth, however probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based upon Lyons financial standing along with looking at the information of the vehicle we can probably get rid of luxury brands from our uncertainty.
When we zoom-in on the automobile we can see that it has some flaws as the outcome of driving and or post-manufacturing adjustment. Significant, there are what appears to be two wooden bench seats behind the chauffeurs seat. The back half of the body appears to be wood.

On Tuesday I shared
a search difficulty and wrote that you might email me if you desired the responses to the questions in the challenge. 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 procedure of discovering the responses. Yesterday morning I invested time writing out the process of finding the answers to Tuesdays search difficulty. You can if you missed the challenge
discover it here. The option is detailed listed below..

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 find a relatively long short article about Lyon and his life including that his parents purchased a house on Paris Hill and Lyon later on lived there.

Now that weve thought about the points above we can start rating the manufacturer of the vehicle and the production year. Keeping in mind that cars didnt considerably alter from one model year to the next at this time, if they did at all, were guessing the year according to decade or half-decade is a viable technique to this obstacle. At this moment, relying on Google Image search is our next step. A look for “1920s cars” or “1910s cars” is a starting location. Nevertheless, those results typically feature examples of high-end vehicles of the time. Were searching for cars and trucks that might have been owned by middle to upper-middle class individuals of the time. At this point while doing so its handy to have a list of American vehicle manufacturers of the 1910s and 1920s. Once again, we might turn to Wikipedia for such a list or to any number of antique automobile sites for such a list.

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

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

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

A search for “1920s cars and trucks” or “1910s automobiles” is a starting location. Compare the images carefully to those of the image of Lyon sitting in his vehicle and youll begin to observe 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 invested at least 10 hours comparing images of cars to the one of Lyon sitting in his automobile. To confirm my details about the automobile I employed the aid of one the top antique vehicle preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

To do this youll desire to expand the picture discovered on the Maine Memory Networks short article about Lyon. By zooming in on the image you can look at some crucial details 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.

Action 1: Identify the airplane and its historical significance.The image itself provides us a huge tip. Do a fast Google search for “southern cross airplane” and the top outcome will be a Wikipedia page about the plane. Its essential to consist of “aircraft” in the search because searching Google for simply “southern cross” will put a video of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash tune Southern Cross at the top of the results. Further down the search engine result 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. In fact, you wont see any referral to a plane in the very first ten pages of Google search results page when searching “southern cross.” “southern cross aircraft” isnt even a term that Google recommends when you get in “southern cross.”.

Usage Google Images to discover pictures of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge automobiles produced in those decades. Compare the images carefully to those of the picture of Lyon sitting 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 vehicle is likewise more rounded than that of the Fords and Studebakers made at the very same time. When we look at the radiator caps of the automobiles, a last detail is on the hood of the automobile. In all three cases, the Dodge examples follow what we see in the picture of Lyon in his car. The final response is a Dodge Touring automobile produced around 1919 (take a year or give) that was modified in the back.

Disclosure: I spent at least ten hours comparing images of cars to the one of Lyon sitting in his automobile. To confirm my information about the car I employed the aid of one the leading antique car preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

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