dates from 1906. The triple stripes are rendered in
red. Today, it is woven in purple. Date: c.1906.Introduction
Our Place for Sharing
Hello and welcome to baird.ca. This is the Baird Family
website.
My brother and sister have recently uncovered a horde of information about our family - information we had no previous knowledge of. It would seem that due the short lives of both my grandfather Raymond (Raymonde as he signed his drawings) Baird and my great grandfather John Alston Baird, we had no idea that John Alston Baird had 13 siblings. If you count the 1st marriage of my great great grandmother Janet (Jennett) nee Alston Baird to Thomas Carmichael, you can add 4 more half siblings for a total of 17! What this means is that our previous belief that we were a relatively small family is in fact not the case at all.
If your Baird family has ancestors from Perth Ontario, we are likely related.
We have uncovered so much family information it required drastic measures to publish it in a form that is digestible. To accomplish this I decided to setup a GEDCOM site to manage it all. If you would like to have a look at our family tree you may do so by clicking the link below. Please note that access to living relatives is restricted to the public. If you are searching your family tree an suspect that you may be a relation, you may request an account.
The Baird Family Tree
Thank you for visiting the Baird family site.
History of Baird Clan
Because it's important!
The mythological motif of saving the King through a feat of
strength, common to other clan histories such as Baird and Turnbull, is
also at the origin of the Baird clan. The legend recounts that the
first Baird saved William the Lion from a wild boar - the killing of a
wild boar also bearing similarities to the origin of Clan Campbell.
The Baird name seems to reflect the geographical location of lands held
by the family in Lanarkshire near the village of Biggar in the
thirteenth century. Early in the fourteenth century King Robert Bruce
bestowed the lands at Meikle and Little Kyp, also in Lanarkshire, to
Richard Baird.
It is stated that Fergus Debard, John Bard, and Robert Bard, who swore
submission to Edward I of England, were from the Kyp branch of the
family. As the family expanded, however, the principal Baird family
came to occupy lands in Auchmedden in Aberdeenshire.
A marriage with the neighbouring Keith family, Earls Marischal of
Scotland, strengthened their influence in the country.
Thomas the Rhymer had created an ancient prophesy that was to hold true
for the Bairds of Auchmedden: "there shall be an eagle in the craig
while there is a Baird in Auchmedden." According to local tradition, a
pair of eagles that had regularly nested on the crags near Auchmedden
left the area when the estates of Auchmedden passed into hands of the
Earls of Aberdeen.
The eagles returned as the Bairds returned to the land through the
marriage of a younger daughter of William Baird of Newbyth to Lord
Haddow, eldest son of the Earl of Aberdeen. The prophesy continued to
be fulfilled as the estate passed to another branch of the Gordon
family.
- Gaelic Name: Mac a'bhaird
- Motto: Dominus fecit (The Lord made)
- Lands: Auchmeddan
- Origin of Name: Placename, Lanarkshire
Other famous Bairds
John Logie Baird (August 14 1888 – June 14 1946) was
a Scottish engineer, who is best known for being the first person to
demonstrate a working television.
Baird was born in Helensburgh, Scotland and educated at Larchfield
School, the Royal Technical College, and the University of Glasgow.
Although the development of television was the result of work by many
inventors, Baird is one of its foremost pioneers. He is generally
credited with being the first person to produce a discernible image on
a television screen, and would go on to produce many other advances in
the field.
In his first attempts to invent television, Baird experimented with the
Nipkow disk and demonstrated that a semi-mechanical analogue television
system was possible with the transmission of a static image of Felix
the Cat in London in February 1924. This early system was highly
primitive - images were difficult to view and transmitted only in
shades of brown. On 30 October 1925 the first moving image was
transmitted- the now famous grainy image of a ventriloquists dummy's
head. Baird later transmitted the image of a local boy he had paid to
take part in his experiments to a crowd of amazed onlookers.
The first public demonstration was in the Selfridges department store
in London. The system was also demonstrated to the Royal Institution
and a reporter from The Times on January 26 1926 in the Soho district
of London.
In 1927 Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles of telephone line
between London and Glasgow. He then set up the Baird Television
Development Company Ltd, which in 1928 made the first transatlantic
television transmission from London to New York and also made the first
television programme for the BBC. He televised the first live
transmission of the Epsom Derby, in 1931.
From 1929 onwards, the BBC broadcasted television programs using the
Baird system, alternating the broadcasts with Marconi's broadcasts of
electronic scanning system television signals during the 1930s. This
setup continued until the company ceased broadcasts with the Baird
system, much to Baird's protest, in 1937.
Eventually, due to its many shortcomings, Baird's mechanical television
system was replaced by the electronic television system.
Baird's numerous other developments demonstrate his particular talent
at invention. He developed, in 1928, a primitive video recording
device, which he dubbed Phonovision
http://www.tvdawn.com/tvimage.htm.
The system consisted of a Phonodisc, which was a 78rpm record that
could play a 30 line video signal. His other developments were in
fibre-optics, radio direction finding, infrared night viewing and
radar. There still remains, however, questions about his exact
contributions to the development of radar, for his wartime defense
projects have never been officially acknowledged by the British
government. According to Malcolm Baird, his son, what is known is that
in 1926 Baird filed a patent for a device that formed images from
reflected radio waves, a device remarkably similar to radar, and that
he was in correspondence with the British government at the time. Much
of the information regarding Baird's work in this area is just
beginning to emerge.
Baird made many other contributions to the field of television before
and after his mechanical system fell into disfavor. In 1928 he
demonstrated the first colour television and true stereoscopic
television. In 1932 he was the first to demonstrate ultra-short wave
transmission. In 1941 he demonstrated a 600 line HDTV colour system,
and during 1944 he tried to persuade English authorities to adopt a
1000 line colour system as standard. He also demonstrated a big screen
television system at the London Coliseum, Berlin, Paris and Stockholm.
Baird died in 1946 after suffering a stroke in February of that year,
leaving behind a legacy of invention and innovation.
About the Author
About Me!
My name's Robert and I work as an entrepreneur. You can view more about the Baird family on this site or visit my company web site; LOGIX Data Products Inc. to learn more about my companies and the services they offer.