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

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 relatively long short article about Lyon and his life including that his moms and dads bought a house on Paris Hill and Lyon later on lived there.

Step 2: Identify who flew on the airplane.
On that same Wikipedia page youll discover that the 4 members of the flight team were Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, Harry Lyon, and James Warner.

Disclosure: I invested at least ten hours comparing images of automobiles to the one of Lyon sitting in his automobile. To validate my info about the car I employed the help of one the leading antique car preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

Additionally, you could have followed the hint about utilizing the Maine Memory Networks site then headed there to do a search within the website for recommendations to Harry Lyon.

Use Google Images to find images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge cars and trucks produced in those decades. Compare the pictures carefully to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his automobile and youll begin to discover 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 3 cases, the Dodge examples are constant with what we see in the photo of Lyon in his car.

Do a fast Google search for “southern cross aircraft” and the leading result will be a Wikipedia page about the airplane. Its important to consist of “airplane” in the search since searching 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. Even more down the search results page for “southern cross” youll discover links to articles about the constellation of the exact same name, links to an energy company, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry.

A search for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s automobiles” is a starting location. Compare the pictures carefully to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck and youll begin to observe that the shape of the door in his vehicle doesnt match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). Disclosure: I spent at least ten hours comparing images of cars 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 country, Jeff Orwig.

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

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

The next action is to figure out which one had a connection to Maine when youve determined who the members of the flight crew were. 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.” 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 “remained.” Lyons page includes “Maine” as part of a link to the Maine Memory Networks website which is mentioned in the hints for this obstacle.

At this moment the process ends up being a bit of uncertainty followed by a procedure of comparison and elimination. There are some points to think about prior to rating what type of vehicle is in the picture. Heres a list of those points to think about:.
Initially, the image 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 financial standing as well as taking a look at the details of the cars and truck we can probably get rid of high-end brands from our uncertainty.
When we zoom-in on the cars and truck we can see that it has some imperfections as the result of driving and or post-manufacturing adjustment. Notable, there are what appears to be two wood bench seats behind the chauffeurs seat. The back half of the body seems wood too.

Now that weve thought about the points above we can begin thinking at the producer of the production and the vehicle year. Noting that cars didnt significantly change from one design year to the next at this time, if they did at all, were guessing the year according to years or half-decade is a viable approach to this difficulty. At this point, relying on Google Image search is our next step. A search for “1920s cars” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning place. Those outcomes typically feature examples of high-end automobiles of the time. Were looking for vehicles that could have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this moment while doing so its useful to have a list of American cars and truck manufacturers of the 1910s and 1920s. Again, we might rely on Wikipedia for such a list or to any number of antique vehicle sites for such a list.

Step 4: Find the referral to a vehicle. At the very bottom of this Maine Memory Network page about Harry Lyon youll see an image of Lyon sitting 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 car manufacturers 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 believe of vehicle makers. Now its a matter of comparing pictures of vehicles produced by those producers throughout the 1910s and early 1920s.

On Tuesday I shared
a search obstacle and wrote that you could email me if you wanted the answers to the questions in the challenge. I got
Yesterday early morning I spent time composing out the process of finding the answers to Tuesdays search difficulty. If you missed out on the challenge, you can
find it here. The option is detailed below..

There are a few methods to get to the answers. What Ive outlined listed 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 obstacles like this one).

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the entire obstacle. To do this youll desire to increase the size of the photo discovered on the Maine Memory Networks short article about Lyon. Fortunately, they supply a zoomable variation of the image. By focusing on the image you can look at some important information including the shape of the front door on the vehicle, the shape of the front of the car, and a little badge on the front of the automobile.

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