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

Usage Google Images to discover pictures of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge automobiles produced in those years. Compare the images carefully to those of the image of Lyon being in his automobile and youll start to see 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 also 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 take a look at the radiator caps of the automobiles. In all 3 cases, the Dodge examples are consistent with what we see in the picture of Lyon in his automobile. The last response is a Dodge Touring vehicle produced around 1919 (take a year or provide) that was modified in the back.

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the entire difficulty. To do this youll wish to enlarge the image found on the Maine Memory Networks post about Lyon. Fortunately, they provide a zoomable version of the image. By focusing 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 automobile, and a little badge on the front of the vehicle.

A search for “1920s cars and trucks” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning location. Compare the photos 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 vehicle does not match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). Disclosure: I spent at least 10 hours comparing images of vehicles to the one of Lyon sitting in his car. To validate my information about the car I got the aid of one the top antique automobile preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

Step 1: Identify the aircraft and its historic significance.The image itself gives us a big hint. Do a quick Google search for “southern cross plane” and the top result will be a Wikipedia page about the aircraft. Its essential to include “airplane” in the search since browsing Google for just “southern cross” will put a video of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song Southern Cross at the top of the results. Even more down the search engine result page for “southern cross” youll discover links to articles about the constellation of the very same name, links to an energy company, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry. You wont see any reference to an airplane in the very first ten pages of Google search results when browsing “southern cross.” “southern cross aircraft” isnt even a term that Google suggests when you go into “southern cross.”.

On Tuesday I shared
a search challenge and wrote that you might email me if you wanted the answers to the concerns in the challenge. I got
Yesterday early morning I spent time writing out the process of finding the answers to Tuesdays search obstacle. If you missed out on the challenge, you can
discover it here. The service is detailed listed below..

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

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

There are a couple of methods to arrive at the answers. What Ive laid out listed below is the most direct way to get to the responses. (Thanks once again to Daniel Russells.
Pleasure of Search for motivating the development of search challenges like this one).

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

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

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 recommendations to Harry Lyon.

The next step is to figure out which one had a connection to Maine as soon as youve determined who the members of the flight crew were. To do this, open the Wikipedia page for each member of the flight team then utilize keyboard commands of CTRL+F (Windows computers) or COMMAND+F (Mac computer systems) to browse each page for the word “Maine.” Only the pages for Charles Kingsford Smith and Harry Lyon include a match for “Maine” and the match on Smiths page is only discovered in the context of the word “stayed.” Lyons page consists of “Maine” as part of a link to the Maine Memory Networks website which is pointed out in the tips for this difficulty.

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

Action 2: Identify who flew on the aircraft.
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 moment the procedure ends up being a bit of guesswork followed by a procedure of comparison and elimination. There are some points to consider prior to guessing at what sort of automobile is in the picture. Heres a list of those points to think about:.
The photo was taken in 1927, a year prior to the flight of the Southern Cross.
From checking out about him, we know that Lyon was not a male of exceptional wealth, but probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based upon Lyons financial standing in addition to looking at the details of the vehicle we can probably get rid of high-end brand names from our guesswork.
When we zoom-in on the automobile we can see that it has some flaws as the result of driving and or post-manufacturing modification. Noteworthy, there are what appears to be two wood bench seats behind the motorists seat. The back half of the body appears to be wood as well.

Action 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 discover a fairly long post about Lyon and his life consisting of that his moms and dads purchased a house on Paris Hill and Lyon later on lived there.

Now that weve considered the points above we can begin thinking at the manufacturer of the production and the car year. Keeping in mind that automobiles didnt substantially alter from one design 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 method to this challenge. A search for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s cars and trucks” is a starting location.

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