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

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

At this moment the process becomes a bit of uncertainty followed by a procedure of comparison and elimination. There are some indicate consider before rating what type of automobile remains in the picture. Heres a list of those indicate consider:.
The picture was taken in 1927, a year before the flight of the Southern Cross.
From checking out him, we understand that Lyon was not a male of remarkable wealth, however probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based upon Lyons monetary standing as well as looking at the details of the cars and truck we can probably get rid of luxury brand names from our guesswork.
When we zoom-in on the vehicle we can see that it has some flaws as the result of driving and or post-manufacturing adjustment. Noteworthy, there are what appears to be two wooden bench seats behind the drivers seat. The back half of the body appears to be wooden.

Action 5: Identify the automobile. This is the hardest part of the entire challenge. To do this youll wish to enlarge the picture discovered on the Maine Memory Networks short article about Lyon. They provide a zoomable version of the image. By focusing on the image you can look at some crucial details consisting of 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 cars and truck.

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. To do this, open the Wikipedia page for each member of the flight crew then utilize keyboard commands of CTRL+F (Windows computers) or COMMAND+F (Mac computers) to search each page for the word “Maine.” Only the pages for Charles Kingsford Smith and Harry Lyon consist of a match for “Maine” and the match on Smiths page is only found in the context of the word “stayed.” Lyons page includes “Maine” as part of a link to the Maine Memory Networks website which is mentioned in the tips for this challenge.

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

Disclosure: I invested at least ten hours comparing images of vehicles to the one of Lyon sitting in his automobile. To validate my info about the car I enlisted the assistance of one the top antique automobile preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

Action 1: Identify the airplane and its historical significance. The image itself offers us a big tip. Do a quick Google search for “southern cross aircraft” and the leading outcome will be a Wikipedia page about the plane. Its important to include “aircraft” 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 discover links to short articles about the constellation of the same name, links to an energy business, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry. In reality, you wont see any recommendation to a plane in the first ten pages of Google search outcomes when browsing “southern cross.” “southern cross aircraft” isnt even a term that Google suggests when you get in “southern cross.”.

On Tuesday I shared
a search obstacle and composed that you might email me if you wanted the responses to the questions in the challenge. I got
a lot more e-mails than I believed I would. And some people I emailed the answers to wrote back requesting for more information about the process of finding the answers. Yesterday early morning I invested time composing out the process of finding the responses to Tuesdays search difficulty. If you missed out on the difficulty, you can
discover it here. The solution is detailed below..

Based upon the lists of American cars and truck producers and what we understand 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 consider car producers. Some grownups will still think about Studebaker as an American automobile producer. Dodge is likewise a common guess as it pleases both the cost and popularity elements of our mission. So now its a matter of comparing images of vehicles produced by those producers during the 1910s and early 1920s.

Step 2: Identify who flew on the aircraft.
Likewise on that same Wikipedia page youll learn that the 4 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 crucial information including the shape of the front door on the car, the shape of the front of the cars and truck, and a little badge on the front of the car.

Usage Google Images to discover images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge cars and trucks produced in those decades. Compare the images closely to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his automobile and youll start to observe 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 three cases, the Dodge examples are consistent with what we see in the picture of Lyon in his vehicle.

A search for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s cars and trucks” is a starting location. Compare the pictures carefully to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his vehicle and youll start to see that the shape of the door in his cars and truck does not match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). Disclosure: I invested at least 10 hours comparing images of vehicles to the one of Lyon sitting in his car. To confirm my information about the vehicle I got the help of one the leading antique vehicle preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

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

There are a couple of methods to show up at the responses. What Ive outlined below is the most direct way to get to the answers. (Thanks once again to Daniel Russells.
Happiness of Search for motivating the advancement of search challenges like this one).

Noting that cars and trucks didnt considerably change 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 practical technique to this challenge. A search for “1920s cars and trucks” or “1910s vehicles” is a starting place. At this point in the procedure its helpful to have a list of American car manufacturers of the 1910s and 1920s.

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

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