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

Based on the lists of American vehicle 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 think of auto makers. Now its a matter of comparing photos of cars and trucks produced by those makers during the 1910s and early 1920s.

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 team 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 “remained.” 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 obstacle.

A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning location. Compare the images carefully to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his vehicle 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). Disclosure: I invested at least 10 hours comparing images of vehicles to the one of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck. To validate my information about the car I employed the help of one the top antique automobile preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the entire challenge. To do this youll wish to increase the size of the photo discovered on the Maine Memory Networks article about Lyon. Fortunately, they supply a zoomable version of the image. By focusing on the image you can look at some crucial details including the shape of the front door on the cars and truck, the shape of the front of the cars and truck, and a little badge on the front of the vehicle.

Use Google Images to find images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge automobiles produced in those years. Compare the images carefully to those of the image of Lyon sitting in his automobile and youll begin to notice that the shape of the door in his cars and truck 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 image of Lyon in his car.

Step 4: Find the referral to a cars and truck. At the extremely 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 see it there)..

There are a few methods to reach the answers. What Ive outlined listed below is the most direct method to get to the responses. (Thanks once again to Daniel Russells.
Pleasure of Search for motivating the development of search obstacles like this one).

Step 1: Identify the plane and its historic significance.The image itself offers us a huge tip. Do a quick Google look for “southern cross aircraft” and the leading outcome will be a Wikipedia page about the aircraft. Its crucial to consist of “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 outcomes. Further down the search engine result page for “southern cross” youll discover links to posts about the constellation of the same name, links to an energy business, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry. You wont see any referral to a plane in the first 10 pages of Google search results when searching “southern cross.” “southern cross airplane” isnt even a term that Google recommends when you enter “southern cross.”.

Disclosure: I invested a minimum of ten hours comparing images of cars to the one of Lyon being in his car. To validate my information about the automobile I enlisted the assistance of one the leading antique vehicle preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig. Jeff is a friend of mine and the curator of Bob Bahres charming vehicle 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 consisting of 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 car.

Action 2: Identify who flew on the aircraft.
Also on that exact same Wikipedia page youll learn that the 4 members of the flight crew were Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, Harry Lyon, and James Warner.

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 discover a fairly long article about Lyon and his life consisting of that his parents bought a home on Paris Hill and Lyon later on lived there.

On Tuesday I shared
a search obstacle and composed that you might email me if you wanted the responses to the concerns in the obstacle. I got
a lot more emails than I believed I would. And some people I emailed the responses to composed back requesting for more details about the procedure of discovering the answers. So yesterday early morning I hung around composing out the procedure of finding the answers to Tuesdays search challenge. If you missed the challenge, you can
find it here. The service is detailed listed below..

Now that weve thought about the points above we can start guessing at the maker of the automobile and the production year. Keeping in mind that vehicles didnt considerably alter from one model year to the next at this time, if they did at all, were guessing the year according to years or half-decade is a feasible approach to this difficulty. At this moment, turning to Google Image search is our next step. A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning location. Those results typically feature examples of high-end cars and trucks of the time. Were trying to find cars and trucks that might have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this moment while doing so its helpful to have a list of American cars and truck manufacturers of the 1910s and 1920s. Once again, we may rely on Wikipedia for such a list or to any number of antique vehicle sites for such a list.

As discussed above, the top Google search engine result 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.

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

At this point the process becomes a bit of uncertainty followed by a procedure of comparison and elimination. There are some indicate think about before rating what kind of car remains in the picture. Heres a list of those indicate think about:.
The photo was taken in 1927, a year prior to the flight of the Southern Cross.
From checking out him, we know that Lyon was not a male of remarkable wealth, however probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based upon Lyons financial standing as well as looking at the details of the vehicle we can most likely remove luxury brand names from our guesswork.
When we zoom-in on the automobile we can see that it has some flaws as the outcome of driving and or post-manufacturing adjustment. Significant, there are what seems two wood bench seats behind the motorists seat. The back half of the body appears to be wood.

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