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

Based on the lists of American vehicle makers and what we understand about Lyon, Ford is the most typical 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 of vehicle producers. Now its a matter of comparing images of cars produced by those makers throughout the 1910s and early 1920s.

At this point the process ends up being a little bit of guesswork followed by a process of contrast and elimination. There are some points to think about prior to guessing at what type of automobile is in the image. Heres a list of those indicate consider:.
Initially, 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, but probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based on Lyons financial standing in addition to looking at the details of the vehicle we can probably remove high-end brand names 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 modification. Significant, there are what appears to be 2 wooden bench seats behind the chauffeurs seat. The back half of the body appears to be wooden.

A search for “1920s cars” or “1910s cars and trucks” is a beginning location. Compare the photos carefully to those of the picture of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck and youll begin to notice that the shape of the door in his car doesnt match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). Disclosure: I spent at least 10 hours comparing images of cars and trucks to the one of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck. To validate my details about the vehicle I enlisted the aid of one the top antique cars and truck preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

By zooming in on the image you can look at some crucial 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 vehicle.

Now that weve thought about the points above we can begin thinking at the manufacturer of the production and the automobile year. Noting that cars didnt significantly alter from one model 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 obstacle. At this moment, relying on Google Image search is our next action. A search for “1920s cars and trucks” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning location. However, those results typically include examples of high-end cars of the time. Were looking for cars and trucks that might have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this point while doing so its useful to have a list of American cars and truck producers of the 1910s and 1920s. Once again, we may rely on Wikipedia for such a list or to any variety of antique automobile websites for such a list.

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

To do this youll desire to increase the size of the image discovered on the Maine Memory Networks post about Lyon. 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 cars and truck, and a little badge on the front of the cars and truck.

Step 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 article about Lyon and his life consisting of that his moms and dads purchased a house on Paris Hill and Lyon later lived there.

Action 2: Identify who flew on the aircraft.
On that very same Wikipedia page youll find out that the 4 members of the flight team were Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, Harry Lyon, and James Warner.

Do a fast Google search for “southern cross plane” and the top result will be a Wikipedia page about the aircraft. Its essential to consist of “airplane” in the search due to the fact that searching Google for just “southern cross” will put a music video of the Crosby, Stills, and Nash tune Southern Cross at the top of the results. Even more down the search results page for “southern cross” youll find links to short articles about the constellation of the same name, links to an energy business, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry.

On Tuesday I shared
If you desired the responses to the concerns in the obstacle, a search challenge and composed that you could email me. I got
a lot more emails than I believed I would. And some people I emailed the answers to composed back asking for more information about the procedure of finding the answers. The other day early morning I spent time composing out the procedure of finding the responses to Tuesdays search obstacle. You can if you missed the challenge
discover it here. The service is detailed below..

Use Google Images to discover images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge cars and trucks produced in those years. Compare the images closely to those of the photo of Lyon sitting in his vehicle and youll start to see 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 3 cases, the Dodge examples are consistent with what we see in the photo of Lyon in his cars and truck.

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

There are a few ways to come to the responses. What Ive detailed below is the most direct way to get to the answers. (Thanks once again to Daniel Russells.
Pleasure of Search for inspiring the development of search challenges like this one).

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

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

Disclosure: I spent at least ten hours comparing images of cars and trucks to the one of Lyon sitting in his car. To validate my info about the vehicle I enlisted the assistance of one the top antique automobile preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

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