The great mathematical instrument maker was born at Bishop Auckland. A cloth-maker by trade, he noticed the irregularities on dial plates in a clockmaker's shop and set about devising better ones. By 1740, he was working in London for Sisson, and by 1745 he had his own business in the Strand. Bird acquired European fame by making instruments of an improved type for the astronomer Bradley, and when the Royal Observatory at Greenwich underwent an instrumental refit, Bird was commissioned to make a brass quadrant 8 feet across. It was ready for use in June 1750 and marked an epoch in practical astronomy. It is still reverently preserved at Greenwich. Soon after, duplicates were ordered for France, Spain and Russia.
Bird supplied Bradley with further instruments of such quality that the commissioners of longitude paid him the enormous sum of £500 on condition that he take on a 7-year apprentice and deliver in writing upon oath, a full account of his working methods. This was the origin of Bird's two treatises The Method of Dividing Mathematical Instruments (1767) and The Method of Constructing Mural Quadrants (1768). Both had a foreword from the astronomer-royal Maskelyne. The standard yards of 1758 and 1760, destroyed when the Houses of Parliament burned down in 1834, were both constructed by Bird.