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

Action 1: Identify the airplane and its historic significance.The image itself provides us a big tip. Do a fast Google look for “southern cross airplane” and the leading result will be a Wikipedia page about the airplane. Its crucial to include “aircraft” in the search since browsing Google for simply “southern cross” will put a 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 posts about the constellation of the exact same name, links to an energy company, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry. You will not see any reference to a plane in the very first 10 pages of Google search results when searching “southern cross.” Additionally, “southern cross aircraft” isnt even a term that Google recommends when you get in “southern cross.”.

At this moment the process becomes a bit of guesswork followed by a process of comparison and elimination. There are some indicate consider before guessing at what kind of automobile remains in the picture. Heres a list of those indicate consider:.
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 guy of exceptional wealth, but most likely middle to upper-middle class.
Based on Lyons financial standing as well as taking a look at the information of the car we can probably eliminate high-end brands from our guesswork.
When we zoom-in on the car we can see that it has some imperfections as the outcome of driving and or post-manufacturing adjustment. Significant, there are what seems two wood bench seats behind the drivers seat. The back half of the body appears to be wooden.

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

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

Additionally, you could have followed the tip about utilizing the Maine Memory Networks website then headed there to do a search within the website for referrals 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 an image of Lyon being in a cars and truck in his driveway in 1927. (The image is copyrighted so youll have to view it there)..

As soon as youve identified who the members of the flight crew 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 team then use keyboard commands of CTRL+F (Windows computer systems) or COMMAND+F (Mac computers) to browse 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 site which is discussed in the hints for this difficulty.

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

Disclosure: I spent at least ten hours comparing images of cars and trucks to the one of Lyon sitting in his vehicle. To verify my info about the vehicle I employed the help of one the leading antique automobile preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

Action 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 short article about Lyon and his life including that his moms and dads purchased a home on Paris Hill and Lyon later lived there.

Now that weve considered the points above we can start thinking at the producer of the production and the vehicle year. Keeping in mind that cars didnt considerably change from one design 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 point, turning to Google Image search is our next step. A search for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning place. Those results usually feature examples of luxury cars and trucks of the time. Were looking for automobiles that might have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this moment in the process its helpful to have a list of American car manufacturers of the 1910s and 1920s. Again, we might turn to Wikipedia for such a list or to any number of antique cars and truck websites for such a list.

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the entire obstacle. To do this youll want to expand the image found on the Maine Memory Networks short article about Lyon. They offer a zoomable version of the image. By zooming in on the image you can look at some essential information consisting of the shape of the front door on the cars and truck, the shape of the front of the automobile, and a little badge on the front of the automobile.

On Tuesday I shared
a search difficulty and wrote that you could email me if you wanted the answers to the concerns in the obstacle. I got
a lot more e-mails than I believed I would. And some individuals I emailed the responses to wrote back requesting for more information about the procedure of finding the answers. So yesterday morning I spent time writing out the procedure of finding the responses to Tuesdays search difficulty. If you missed out on the obstacle, you can
discover it here. The service is detailed listed below..

Based on the lists of American car manufacturers and what we know 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 believe of vehicle manufacturers. Now its a matter of comparing photos of cars produced by those producers during the 1910s and early 1920s.

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

Usage Google Images to find images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge vehicles produced in those decades. Compare the photos closely to those of the image of Lyon sitting in his automobile and youll start 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). The front of Lyons vehicle is also more rounded than that of the Fords and Studebakers made at the exact same time. When we look at the radiator caps of the cars, a final information is on the hood of the automobile. In all 3 cases, the Dodge examples follow what we see in the photo of Lyon in his automobile. The last response is a Dodge Touring cars and truck produced around 1919 (provide or take a year) that was customized in the back.

A search for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s automobiles” is a beginning location. Compare the pictures closely to those of the image of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck and youll start to see 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 invested at least 10 hours comparing images of automobiles to the one of Lyon sitting in his automobile. To validate my details about the automobile I got the help of one the leading antique automobile preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

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