Friday, November 14, 1997Site Map · Contact · Custodians

Nothing is ever lost.Records Storage · Microfilm · Videotape · Retention

Our Company

A bronze plaque: Ordinal Records & Retention. Founded March 5, 1951, by Ambrose Ord. Nothing is ever lost.
The plaque in our lobby, 1159 Meridian Way.

Ordinal Records & Retention was founded on Monday, March 5, 1951, by Mr. Ambrose Ord, with a single room of filing drawers and a promise our clients still hold us to: nothing is ever lost.

Forty-six years later we keep records for families, firms, hospitals and the courts, and we have never lost a file.

Our history

Year 
1951Ambrose Ord founds Ordinal Records & Retention at 1159 Meridian Way.
1952The first issue of The Ordinal Record, our monthly newsletter.
1953Ordinal Pictures makes its first training film, A Place for Everything, starring Ollie the night owl.
1958Ordinal opens its first retention programme. The Board, as constituted that year, serves to this day.
1961–67Ordinal Pictures' library grows: Let It Ring!, Your Time Is Valued, Stay in the Light!
1971Our twentieth anniversary, and the mark you know today.
1996Ordinal sponsors Ollie's Nest, a playroom at St. Agnes Children's Hospital.
1997The Overnight Retention Programme: sixty places, filled in thirty days.

The Board

Five men in dark suits beneath the Ordinal mark.
The Board, from the 1997 annual report.

Ordinal is guided by its Board of five partners, led by our founder, Mr. Ord, who remains Chairman. The Board has served without a single change of membership since 1958. We believe continuity is the first duty of a records company.

The Office of the Chairman can be reached by appointment.

Our mark

The 1951 seal: an hourglass inside a filing drawer, ringed by the words Ordinal Records & Retention, Established 1951.
Our first seal, 1951.

Our mark is the front of a single filing drawer, seen straight on, with its pull handle in the shape of the infinity sign: filing, forever. It was drawn for our twentieth anniversary in 1971 from the seal Mr. Ord commissioned in 1951.

The motto on the seal, Nihil umquam amittitur, is Latin for our slogan.