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

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the entire challenge. To do this youll wish to enlarge the image found on the Maine Memory Networks article about Lyon. They provide a zoomable variation of the image. By focusing on the image you can take a look at some important details including the shape of the front door on the vehicle, the shape of the front of the cars and truck, and a little badge on the front of the automobile.

Based upon the lists of American car makers 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 forefront of Americans minds today when they think about vehicle makers. Some adults will still consider Studebaker as an American cars and truck maker. Dodge is also a common guess as it satisfies both the price and appeal parts of our mission. Now its a matter of comparing photos of cars produced by those producers throughout the 1910s and early 1920s.

Disclosure: I invested at least ten hours comparing images of cars to the one of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck. To validate my information about the cars and truck I enlisted the aid of one the leading antique vehicle preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

There are a couple of methods to get here at the answers. What Ive described below is the most direct method to get to the responses. (Thanks again to Daniel Russells.
Joy of Search for motivating the development of search challenges like this one).

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

At this point the process ends up being a little bit of guesswork followed by a procedure of comparison and removal. There are some indicate think about prior to guessing at what sort of automobile remains in the photo. Heres a list of those points to consider:.
First, the picture 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 exceptional wealth, however probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based on Lyons monetary standing along with looking at the information of the cars and truck we can most likely get rid of luxury brand names from our uncertainty.
When we zoom-in on the vehicle we can see that it has some flaws as the outcome of driving and or post-manufacturing modification. Noteworthy, there are what appears to be two wood bench seats behind the drivers seat. The back half of the body appears to be wooden also.

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

On Tuesday I shared
a search difficulty and composed that you might email me if you desired the answers to the concerns in the challenge. I got
a lot more e-mails than I thought I would. And some individuals I emailed the responses to wrote back requesting more information about the procedure of finding the responses. The other day morning I spent time composing out the procedure of finding the answers to Tuesdays search challenge. If you missed out on the challenge, you can
discover it here. The solution is detailed below..

A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s cars and trucks” is a beginning location. Compare the images carefully to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his car and youll start to observe 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 invested at least 10 hours comparing images of automobiles to the one of Lyon sitting in his vehicle. To verify my info about the vehicle I enlisted the aid of one the top antique automobile preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

Now that weve thought about the points above we can begin rating the manufacturer of the production and the automobile 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 decade or half-decade is a viable approach to this obstacle. At this point, turning to Google Image search is our next step. A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s automobiles” is a starting place. Nevertheless, those results generally feature examples of luxury automobiles of the time. Were searching for automobiles that could have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this point at the same time its helpful to have a list of American automobile producers of the 1910s and 1920s. Again, we may rely on Wikipedia for such a list or to any number of antique automobile sites for such a list.

Do a fast Google search for “southern cross airplane” and the top outcome will be a Wikipedia page about the aircraft. Its important to consist of “airplane” in the search due to the fact that browsing 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. Further down the search results page for “southern cross” youll discover links to posts about the constellation of the exact same name, links to an energy company, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry.

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

Once youve identified who the members of the flight team 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 use keyboard commands of CTRL+F (Windows computers) or COMMAND+F (Mac computer systems) to search 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 includes “Maine” as part of a link to the Maine Memory Networks website which is pointed out in the hints for this challenge.

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

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

Action 2: Identify who flew on the plane.
On that very 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 essential information 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 vehicle.

You may also like...