I’ve had this for years and just sold it on the EE. I thought the Retro community might like a look at it. This is a Baird day / night “holographic” heads-up display sight. It was made specifically for the M16 family of rifles. Baird was an early pioneer of night vision goggles and this sight was made during those early days. I believe this system was the first “holographic” sight system for the M16. When looking at the technology in this sight, you can easily see how this concept was turned 90 degrees and shrunk (as electronic advancements allowed) to produce the holographic sights we have today. It has both a day and night setting along with an on/off brightness control. It has a carrying handle mount with three mounting positions. The elevation and windage adjustments have crisp click adjustments. For night use, you look thought the sight with night vision goggles with your head straight. To use the sight during the day, you place your cheek on the stock just as if you were using your right eye with the rifle sights, and your left eye lines up with the holo sight. To me, its very easy and comfortable to use and does not weight much. As I understand, Baird worked with and merged with Varo and latter Litton Industries bought Baird and Varo.

Thats interesting!

Amazing..!!!

Man what a unique sight, what batteries does it take?

holy bore offset batman! That's almost as much as those funky WW1 sniper scopes that hung off the side of the rifle.

Cool.  What is the reticle and battery life like?

Awesomeness ????

That’s “Baird to the bone” ….

Wow! Wish I'd seen it on the EE, I love this sort of thing.

Do you have any idea what the manufacturing date was and if this sort of unit ever saw action?

I found the patent application - filed 1985.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US4658139A

Cool! Thanks for the post OP.

Double tap.

Man what a unique sight, what batteries does it take?
I don’t remember exactly, but it was a puck battery like the ones in the early NVG’s

Cool.  What is the reticle and battery life like?
Don’t remember for sure, I’ve had this for a really long time. But I think it was a cross like the center of a duplex. No clue on battery life.

Do you have any idea what the manufacturing date was and if this sort of unit ever saw action?
I found the patent application - filed 1985.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US4658139A

Thanks for finding that. I had seen that before but when I was looking for that for the EE post I couldn’t find it. Props to your Google Foo.

@Merk

I was hoping to see you at the Gonzales show last week.  I was going to tell you I had found the patent information as well.  The original in the patent is 6Volt (it used four AA batteries).  I would assume yours is/was 6V as well, but with a mil-spec battery.  I also found a photo of the NV goggles that were used with it.  The photo was for the AA battery conversion for the goggles.

EDIT: Here's the Baird NVG with AA battery adapter.

@Dex223

COOL
We couldn’t get tables for Gonzales, you know who (PDF) called but there was some mix up.
That Armalite waffle mag sold also

See ya soon