Transport Through the Syzygies

During the second world war 1939-1945, there were restrictions on advertising commercial vehicles, as they could not be ordered due to war commitments. Sydney Guy was a marketing expert as can be seen by the many advertisements published from the early days of production.

To get around this, he set about devising a series of advertisements that could be seen as a puzzle for readers. A Syzygie is a term used to describe links or alignments in astronomy, and he used this to show the links between historical modes of transport and present day (1940's) ones. The present day examples just happened to feature Guy products.

These adverts were published one by one, in a mysterious way, causing some debate. Eventually, a final ad offered a booklet for 1 penny which offered an explanation..