Thanks
There is a technical reason why the ESP8266 starts up with the 74880 baud rate, if you want to know why see here:-
https://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=160&t=12635&hilit=+74880
74880 is not a standard baud rate and hence is not supported by all terminals. I use CoolTerm see here for details:-
https://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2664&hilit=coolterm
However I think that the Arduio IDE now supports 74880.
I have reposted this information here so that newcomers can find it. Hope you don't mind