 Charles Baird started his working life in 1782 as an apprentice at the Carron Ironworks near Falkirk.By the age of 19 Baird had a supervisory post in the gun department, and in 1786 he accompanied a Carron Company manager, Charles Gascoigne, a son of the owner's family, to Russia to establish the Aleksandrovsk gun factory at Petrozavodsk, and a cannonball foundry at Kronstadt.Gascoigne had been invited to Russia by Samuel Greig, a Scot who was an admiral in the Russian Navy.