AVIATION history, like all history, is the story of winners who were good at self-promotion.
Thus it was that we know about the Wright brothers and their first flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903, although some six months before that a young Englishman called Richard Pearse flew further and longer in New Zealand.
Andrew Blain Baird was a blacksmith in Rothesay. Originally from Galloway, he had worked as a lighthouse keeper on Lismore as well as in a steelworks before settling on Bute. He had an inventive mind, as demonstrated by his improvements to a variety of agricultural implements and sometime before the UK’s first official air show, held in Blackpool in October 1909, he became interested in aviation.
In July 1910, he exhibited the plane in the Esplanade Gardens in Rothesay before it was taken to the Bute Highland Games on August 20. And that was it. Baird, as far as we know, made no attempt to fly again and the aircraft was broken up. The engine stayed in his smithy until it was demolished almost half a century later. The propeller was bought by a local bank manager and eventually donated to the Museum of Flight.
A week ago, the Baird of Bute Society held its first series of events since 2019, and this included the by-now-legendary annual dinner at which awards are given for distinguished contributions by Scots men and women to science, innovation and aviation. Kilmarnock Academy and Glasgow University graduate Sir Stephen Hillier, former head of the RAF and now chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, was there as patron of the society along with – among others – Craig Clark, founder of Clyde Space; cancer researcher Professor Patrick Gunning; Sir Ian Gray, director of aerospace at Cranfield University; and Dugald Cameron, former director of the Glasgow School of Art and design engineer and aviation artist.
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