HRO, Inc. history

HRO can trace its earliest history to 1898, when William McKinley was in the White House and two Denver attorneys began a partnership in Colorado.

On October 23, 1914 they incorporated in Massachusetts as the National Toy Company.

Over 8,800 of these toys were sold between January and June of 1916 and the company planned to make 16,000 more during the remainder of 1916.

In 1919 Harold D. Roberts joined the firm and one year later became the main draftsman of the Mineral Leasing Act that guided the ways in which the federal government leased oil, gas, and other mineral rights to companies.

In the early 1920's several radio stations began regularly scheduled broadcasting and the public craze was to build radio receivers.

The stock market crash of 1929 did not hurt Denver as much as it affected other areas of the nation, and the law firm, comprised of about ten lawyers, stayed active with oil and banking issues throughout the 1930s. For example, Holme and Dines, Jr., helped found the United States National Bank of Denver in 1921 and served on that entity's board of directors.

In 1922 they began supplying variable capacitors to Hill who sold them as fast as National could make them.

In 1924, two engineers from Harvard University, Fred H. Drake and Glenn Browning, developed the Browning Drake tuner which was "guaranteed" to improve radio reception; Browning and Drake approached National to manufacture the tuner.

Attorneys Robert E. More and Milton J. Keegan also started working for the firm in 1926.

These were announced late in 1927.

The SW-2 was extensively advertised as a TV receiver and Millen wrote an article in the November 1928 issue of Radio News describing his TV experiments.

In 1929, in collaboration with Glenn Browning, National announced the MB-29 broadcast band tuner which consisted of three stages of rf amplification and bandpass tuning.

In 1930 Millen and Kruse, who was a former technical editor of QST, designed the SW-5 receiver.

On February 16, 1932 the corporation charter was further amended to formally change the company name to the National Company, Inc. by which name the company is generally remembered.

The HRO was first announced in the October 1934 issue of QST and delivery was promissed for December 1934 in time for the Christmas trade.

However, technical problems delayed deliveries until March 1935; the photograph shown in the January issue of QST is that of the first production model.

In February 1936 National announced the HRO Jr., a scaled down version of the HRO, at a cost of just under $100.

In the summer of 1939 war broke out in Europe; representatives of Allied governments, particularly the Royal Navy, visited National and ordered large numbers of receivers, particularly HRO's.

In 1950 the firm's name was changed to Holme, Roberts, More, Owen & Keegan.

Two sons of name partners joined the firm after World War II. Peter Holme, Jr., had come onboard by 1955, about the same time his father died.

In 1957 James C. Owen, Jr., joined the firm.

For years he served the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Denver, which his father had founded in 1961.

The same basic receiver stayed in continuous production almost thirty years until October 1964 when the HRO-500 was announced.

By 1965 HRO was among Denver's top three largest law firms.

On April 28, 1966, a group of alumni and alumnae officially founded the "Harvard Pierian Foundation," now known as the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra Foundation.

HRO helped its clients comply with numerous federal and state environmental laws that began to be passed around 1970.

In June 1974, FAN-WEL changed its name to National Radio Company, Inc. and is still doing business under that name.

Commercial aviation was the first to develop HRO-like principles after a deadly United Airline accident in Portland in 1978.

However, after United States Supreme Court rulings opened the way for professional advertising, American Lawyer magazine began in 1979 to feature information about partner salaries in different firms.

In 1980 HRO opened its Salt Lake City office, the first out-of-state firm to do so.

It started in 1986 when several Utah companies, including AMAX Magnesium, later renamed MagCorp, represented by Buchi, asked the State Tax Commission for a 20 percent property tax discount.

Some in the firm backed Republican partner Don Bain when he ran for Denver mayor in 1987, while others backed the successful candidate, Federico Pena.

In 1991 the firm opened a new office in London.

United States military aviation has been slower to adopt CRM. After a series of deadly F-14 Tomcat accidents in 1996, the United States Navy developed its Command Safety Assessment Survey and began using it in safety stand-downs to assess safety culture.

Buchi spent three years developing a new state tax court system that was implemented on May 1, 1997, only to be rejected by the Utah Supreme Court.

In the November 1998 issue of American Lawyer, HRO partner David Goldberg said the firm's Russian practice was profitable.

In the January 17, 1999 Denver Rocky Mountain News, HRO's Executive Committee Chairman Dean Salter described HROs future plans.

In 2001, BP (British Petroleum) developed a program to improve refinery availability using HRO constructs.

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