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

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

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 recommendations to Harry Lyon.

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

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 moms and dads bought a house on Paris Hill and Lyon later on lived there.

Now that weve thought about the points above we can begin guessing at the maker of the production and the cars and truck year. Keeping in mind that automobiles didnt significantly alter 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 technique to this obstacle. A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s cars” is a beginning location.

Do a quick Google search for “southern cross airplane” and the leading outcome will be a Wikipedia page about the plane. Its important to consist of “airplane” in the search because browsing Google for simply “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 results page for “southern cross” youll discover links to short articles about the constellation of the exact same name, links to an energy business, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry.

Usage Google Images to discover images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge cars produced in those decades. Compare the photos closely to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his automobile and youll begin to notice 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). In all 3 cases, the Dodge examples are constant with what we see in the picture of Lyon in his cars and truck.

At this point the procedure becomes a little bit of guesswork followed by a procedure of contrast and elimination. There are some points to think about before guessing at what kind of automobile is in the image. Heres a list of those indicate think about:.
Initially, the picture was taken in 1927, a year before the flight of the Southern Cross.
From reading about him, we know that Lyon was not a man of remarkable wealth, however probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based on Lyons monetary standing in addition to looking at the details of the vehicle we can probably eliminate high-end brands from our uncertainty.
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. Notable, there are what appears to be 2 wooden bench seats behind the drivers seat. The back half of the body seems wood too.

A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning place. Compare the images carefully to those of the image of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck and youll start to notice 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 invested at least 10 hours comparing images of automobiles to the one of Lyon sitting in his automobile. To verify my details about the vehicle I got the aid of one the leading antique cars and truck preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

On Tuesday I shared
If you desired the answers to the concerns in the obstacle, a search challenge and wrote that you might email me. I got
a lot more emails than I thought I would. And some people I emailed the responses to wrote back requesting for more details about the process of discovering the responses. So yesterday morning I hung out writing out the process of finding the answers to Tuesdays search challenge. If you missed out on the difficulty, you can
find it here. The option is detailed below..

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

Based on the lists of American vehicle producers and what we know 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 leading edge of Americans minds today when they think of automobile manufacturers. Now its a matter of comparing photos of automobiles produced by those makers throughout the 1910s and early 1920s.

When youve determined who the members of the flight crew were, the next action is to figure out which one had a connection to Maine. Lyons page includes “Maine” as part of a link to the Maine Memory Networks site which is discussed in the tips for this difficulty.

Disclosure: I invested at least ten hours comparing pictures of cars to the one of Lyon being in his cars and truck. To validate my details about the vehicle I employed the assistance of one the top antique vehicle preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig. Jeff is a buddy of mine and the curator of Bob Bahres elegant car collection housed on Paris Hill in Paris, Maine. You can find out more about the collection here..

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

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the whole difficulty. To do this youll desire to enlarge the picture discovered on the Maine Memory Networks short article about Lyon. They supply a zoomable variation of the image. By zooming in on the image you can take a 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 vehicle.

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

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