The Baird company's most notable work was not concerned with 405-line electronic television but the following information may be of some help.

Which is the best website for learning about Baird?

http://www.dfm.dircon.co.uk (although it concentrates on the restoration of the world’s oldest video recordings).

What about the American Baird?

Hollis Baird (full name Hollis Semple Baird) was the chief engineer of the Short Wave & Television Laboratories in Boston, USA during the early 1930s. In addition to radio sets, the company manufactured disc-type television receivers with the name Baird displayed prominently, which by playing on our Baird's fame in the USA, caused considerable confusion and must have misled purchasers to some degree. Hollis Baird (believed Canadian born) was not related to John Logie Baird, nor was there any connection between the two companies.

Back in 1990, writing in the American Spec Com magazine, Mel Dunbrack (amateur radio callsign W1BHD, now deceased) wrote: "My first encounter with amateur hobby television occurred in 1928 when I experimented with a whirring disk. Mechanical television hit a peak in 1931 when Hollis S. Baird's narrowband scanning disk system became popular by his Short Wave and Television Corporation of Boston. They were located on Brookline Avenue. Their transmitter went on the air in 1930 with the [experimental, what we would call test & development] call letters W1XAV. In 1931 they transmitted 60 line, 20 frames per second pictures on the 2850 to 2950kc band with 1kW of power. At that time I was working for the Crosley Radio Company in Kenmore Square and it was then that I met Hollis Baird. I have kept in touch with him ever since, our last contact being in January of 1987.

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