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

On Tuesday I shared
a search obstacle and wrote that you could email me if you wanted the answers to the concerns in the challenge. I got
a lot more emails than I believed I would. And some individuals I emailed the responses to wrote back requesting for more details about the procedure of discovering the answers. The other day early morning I spent time writing out the procedure of finding the answers to Tuesdays search challenge. You can if you missed the obstacle
discover it here. The option is detailed below..

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

Based on the lists of American cars and truck manufacturers 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 believe of vehicle manufacturers. Now its a matter of comparing images of vehicles produced by those makers during the 1910s and early 1920s.

Disclosure: I spent at least 10 hours comparing images of vehicles to the one of Lyon sitting in his car. To verify my info about the vehicle I employed the aid of one the top antique vehicle preservationists in the nation, Jeff Orwig.

Action 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 find a fairly long post about Lyon and his life including that his moms and dads bought a home on Paris Hill and Lyon later on lived there.

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

At this point the process becomes a bit of guesswork followed by a process of comparison and removal. There are some indicate consider before thinking at what kind of automobile remains in the image. Heres a list of those points to consider:.
The picture was taken in 1927, a year prior to the flight of the Southern Cross.
From reading about him, we understand that Lyon was not a guy of extraordinary wealth, but probably middle to upper-middle class.
Based upon Lyons monetary standing along with looking at the information of the vehicle we can probably get rid of luxury brands from our uncertainty.
When we zoom-in on the automobile we can see that it has some imperfections as the result of driving and or post-manufacturing modification. Notable, there are what appears to be two wood bench seats behind the chauffeurs seat. The back half of the body appears to be wood.

Now that weve considered the points above we can begin rating the manufacturer of the production and the vehicle 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 decade or half-decade is a feasible technique to this challenge. At this moment, relying on Google Image search is our next action. A look for “1920s automobiles” or “1910s automobiles” is a starting place. Nevertheless, those results typically feature examples of luxury automobiles of the time. Were trying to find cars and trucks that could have been owned by middle to upper-middle class people of the time. At this point while doing so its helpful to have a list of American automobile manufacturers of the 1910s and 1920s. Again, we might rely on Wikipedia for such a list or to any number of antique car websites for such a list.

A search for “1920s vehicles” or “1910s cars and trucks” is a starting place. Compare the photos closely to those of the photo of Lyon sitting in his cars and truck and youll start to notice that the shape of the door in his car 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 information about the cars and truck I enlisted the aid of one the leading antique car preservationists in the country, Jeff Orwig.

Step 4: Find the recommendation to a car. At the extremely 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 need to view it there)..

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

Step 5: Identify the car.This is the hardest part of the whole challenge. To do this youll want to increase the size of the picture found on the Maine Memory Networks short article about Lyon. Thankfully, they provide a zoomable version of the image. By zooming in on the image you can look at some crucial information consisting of 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 vehicle.

Use Google Images to find images of Ford, Studebaker, and Dodge cars produced in those decades. Compare the images 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 cars and truck does not match those of Ford and Studebaker (theyre not as rounded at the bottom). The front of Lyons vehicle is likewise more rounded than that of the Fords and Studebakers made at the very same time. A last information is on the hood of the cars and truck when we look at the radiator caps of the lorries. In all 3 cases, the Dodge examples follow what we see in the photo of Lyon in his cars and truck. The final answer is a Dodge Touring cars and truck produced around 1919 (take a year or offer) that was modified in the back.

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

There are a couple of ways to come to the answers. What Ive detailed listed below is the most direct way 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 airplane and its historic significance.The image itself offers us a huge hint. Do a quick Google search for “southern cross airplane” and the leading outcome will be a Wikipedia page about the airplane. Its important to include “airplane” in the search since browsing Google for just “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 find links to short articles about the constellation of the very same name, links to an energy business, and links to a Brazilian award for chivalry. In fact, you wont see any reference to an aircraft in the very first ten pages of Google search engine result when searching “southern cross.” “southern cross airplane” isnt even a term that Google suggests when you enter “southern cross.”.

Once youve recognized who the members of the flight crew were, the next step is to determine which one had a connection to Maine. 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.” Just the pages for Charles Kingsford Smith and Harry Lyon consist of a match for “Maine” and the match on Smiths page is just found in the context of the word “stayed.” Lyons page consists of “Maine” as part of a link to the Maine Memory Networks site which is mentioned in the tips for this obstacle.

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