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

Based on the lists of American automobile manufacturers and what we know 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 believe of auto manufacturers. Now its a matter of comparing photos of vehicles produced by those manufacturers throughout the 1910s and early 1920s.

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

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

By zooming in on the image you can look at some important details consisting of 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 automobile.

There are a few ways to get here at the answers. What Ive laid out listed below is the most direct method to get to the responses. (Thanks once again to Daniel Russells.
Happiness of Search for inspiring the development of search difficulties like this one).

Noting that cars and trucks didnt significantly change from one model year to the next at this time, if they did at all, were thinking the year according to decade or half-decade is a feasible method to this challenge. A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s cars” is a beginning location. At this point in the procedure its practical to have a list of American automobile makers of the 1910s and 1920s.

On Tuesday I shared
If you desired the answers to the questions in the difficulty, a search challenge and wrote that you might email me. I got
Yesterday early morning I invested time composing out the procedure of discovering the answers to Tuesdays search obstacle. If you missed out on the obstacle, you can
find it here. The service is detailed below..

Step 1: Identify the plane and its historic significance. The image itself provides 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 important to include “plane” in the search due to the fact that browsing 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. Further down the search engine result page for “southern cross” youll find links to posts about the constellation of the exact same name, links to an energy business, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry. You will not see any referral to an airplane in the first 10 pages of Google search results when browsing “southern cross.” “southern cross airplane” isnt even a term that Google suggests when you go into “southern cross.”.

A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning place. Compare the images carefully to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his car and youll start to discover 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 and trucks to the one of Lyon sitting in his automobile. To verify my information about the automobile I enlisted the assistance of one the top antique vehicle preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

When youve determined 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 crew then utilize keyboard commands of CTRL+F (Windows computer systems) or COMMAND+F (Mac computer systems) to search each page for the word “Maine.” Just the pages for Charles Kingsford Smith and Harry Lyon include a match for “Maine” and the match on Smiths page is only found in the context of the word “stayed.” 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.

Step 3: Find the referral 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 article about Lyon and his life consisting of that his parents purchased a home on Paris Hill and Lyon later on lived there.

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

Usage Google Images to discover images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge cars and trucks produced in those decades. Compare the pictures closely to those of the image of Lyon being in his vehicle and youll begin to notice that the shape of the door in his car doesnt match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). The front of Lyons automobile is likewise more rounded than that of the Fords and Studebakers made at the same time. A final detail is on the hood of the cars and truck when we look at the radiator caps of the automobiles. In all 3 cases, the Dodge examples are constant with what we see in the photo of Lyon in his automobile. The final answer is a Dodge Touring car produced around 1919 (take a year or provide) that was modified in the back.

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

Step 5: Identify the automobile. By zooming in on the image you can look at some essential 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 car.

At this point the process ends up being a little bit of guesswork followed by a process of comparison and elimination. There are some indicate think about prior to rating what type of automobile remains in the photo. 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 male of remarkable wealth, but probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based upon Lyons financial standing in addition to looking at the details of the cars and truck we can most likely eliminate high-end 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 modification. Significant, there are what seems 2 wood bench seats behind the chauffeurs seat. The back half of the body appears to be wooden.

Disclosure: I spent at least 10 hours comparing images of automobiles to the one of Lyon sitting in his automobile. To verify my details about the car I enlisted the assistance of one the top antique automobile preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

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