Surgical needle and sharps holding container

In a hinged disposable container for retaining surgical implements, the improvement comprising:

• an outside shell means for completely containing the implements comprised of two open-topped boxes;
• a hinge means for pivotally attaching said open-topped boxes to each other so that said open-topped boxes may be disposed against each other to form one continuous enclosure;
• a closure means to maintain said open-topped boxes in a closed position;
• an elongated resilient strip of resilient material which is provided with one or more slots, each slot defining resilient surfaces on either side of the slot which make contiguous contact and are slightly deformed upon a surgical implement being inserted into the slot so as to retain the implement by the frictional forces exerted by said surfaces, said strip being attached to an inside surface of at least one open-topped box;
• and numerical indicia means provided adjacent to said slots so that each slot is indicated with a sequential number.