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

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

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

On Tuesday I shared
If you wanted the responses to the questions in the difficulty, a search challenge and wrote that you could email me. I got
a lot more emails than I thought I would. And some people I emailed the answers to wrote back asking for more details about the process of discovering the answers. Yesterday morning I spent time composing out the procedure of finding the answers to Tuesdays search challenge. You can if you missed out on the difficulty
discover it here. The service is detailed listed below..

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the whole obstacle. To do this youll desire to expand the photo found on the Maine Memory Networks article about Lyon. Fortunately, they provide a zoomable version of the image. By focusing on the image you can take a look at some essential information 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 cars and truck.

There are a couple of ways to get to the responses. What Ive detailed below is the most direct method to get to the answers. (Thanks once again to Daniel Russells.
Pleasure of Search for inspiring the advancement of search challenges like this one).

Step 1: Identify the aircraft and its historical significance.The image itself offers us a big tip. Do a quick Google look for “southern cross plane” and the leading outcome will be a Wikipedia page about the plane. Its crucial to consist of “aircraft” in the search since searching Google for simply “southern cross” will put a music video of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song Southern Cross at the top of the results. Even more down the search results page for “southern cross” youll discover links to articles about the constellation of the same name, links to an energy company, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry. In fact, you wont see any reference to an airplane in the very first ten pages of Google search engine result when searching “southern cross.” “southern cross aircraft” isnt even a term that Google suggests when you enter “southern cross.”.

A search for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s cars and trucks” is a beginning place. Compare the photos carefully to those of the image of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck and youll begin to see that the shape of the door in his automobile doesnt match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). Disclosure: I spent at least 10 hours comparing images of cars to the one of Lyon sitting in his car. To confirm my information about the car I enlisted the help of one the leading antique automobile preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

Once youve recognized 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 site which is mentioned in the hints for this challenge.

Use Google Images to find images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge cars and trucks produced in those decades. Compare the photos closely to those of the photo of Lyon sitting in his vehicle and youll start to see that the shape of the door in his car does not 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 picture of Lyon in his cars and truck.

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 car, and a little badge on the front of the automobile.

Now that weve considered the points above we can start rating the producer of the car and the production year. Keeping in mind that automobiles didnt considerably 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 viable 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 automobiles” is a starting location. Those results typically include examples of luxury vehicles of the time. Were trying to find cars that might have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this moment in the process its valuable to have a list of American cars and truck producers of the 1910s and 1920s. Once again, we might turn to Wikipedia for such a list or to any number of antique car sites for such a list.

Based on the lists of American vehicle manufacturers and what we know 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 think of automobile producers. Now its a matter of comparing photos of cars produced by those producers during the 1910s and early 1920s.

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

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

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

At this moment the process becomes a bit of uncertainty followed by a procedure of contrast and elimination. There are some points to consider prior to rating what sort of automobile is in the picture. Heres a list of those indicate consider:.
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 man of extraordinary wealth, but probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based on Lyons monetary standing in addition to taking a look at the details of the cars and truck we can probably eliminate high-end brand names from our uncertainty.
When we zoom-in on the vehicle we can see that it has some imperfections as the result of driving and or post-manufacturing adjustment. Significant, there are what seems 2 wood bench seats behind the motorists seat. The back half of the body appears to be wood too.

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

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