Andrew Blain Baird lived from 1 January 1862 to 9 September 1951. He was a blacksmith in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute who on 17 September 1910 completed the first flight by an entirely Scottish designed and built heavier-than-air aircraft, the Baird Monoplane.
Baird was one of three sons born to a fisherman, who lived beside Luce Bay in Galloway. The young Andrew was apprenticed to a local blacksmith before working first as a lighthouse keeper on Lismore and then in an ironworks at Gartcosh on Clydeside. In 1887, at the age of 25, he set himself up as a blacksmith in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute. In 1892 he married Euphemia Martin at Glecknabae Farm on the island. They later had two daughters, who died in infancy, and two sons who survived into adulthood.
It is unknown when Baird first developed an interest in aviation, but he certainly corresponded with early pioneers such as Louis Bleriot and S. F. Cody about the finer points of aircraft design. A visit to the Blackpool Aviation Week in October 1909 seems to have given focus to his enthusiasm, and when he returned to Rothesay he began work on an aircraft of his own design, the Baird Monoplane. This was generally similar in layout to the aircraft in which Bleriot had made the first crossing of the English Channel on 25 July 1909, albeit with a unique control system. His aircraft also had a four-cylinder air and water-cooled engine made by Alexander Brothers in Edinburgh. The body was constructed from tubular steel and the wings were covered in silk sewn by Mrs Baird.
While it was on show over the summer of 1910, the Baird Monoplane was examined by Thomas Sopwith, who would later become an aviation pioneer in his own right and an aircraft manufacturer. With Baird’s permission, Sopwith drew on some of the novel ideas in the Baird Monoplane when he later began building his own aircraft, which went on to have a significant impact during World War One. Baird’s name was also remembered when, in 2010, the small Bute Airstrip near the southern end of the island was renamed in his honour as Baird Airstrip.
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