Image: Colonel Sanders' business card, c. late 1940s

Description: Here are my first impressions without the benefit of asking the museum curator for answers. Colonel Sanders is wearing the colonel suit and tie. He has a business card from Corbin, Kentucky with the business name "Kentucky Fried Chicken". Kentucky Fried Chicken's first franchise was Utah's Harman's Cafe in August of 1952. Franchisee Pete Harman helped Sanders pick out a suit that emphasized the stereotypical southern gentility — albeit Harland Sanders was born and raised in Indiana. After thinking about Utah Fried Chicken, Sanders and Harman decided fried chicken was best branded as a southern thing. As I recall, Sanders showed up in Salt Lake City and franchisee Harman put him to use on a float in a parade to advertise his newly branded restaurant. They had to quickly buy the right suit and found a white one that fit the southern hospitality image. Frankly, Sanders' white suit reminds me of an antebellum plantation owner. Anyhow, that white suit stuck and the Colonel was seen wearing it during publicity appearances since. So, I'm assuming this grey suit is before that early Utah parade. Yet, Sanders hair is white. He's sporting his now iconic goatee and mustache. So, maybe the dark business suit is just Sanders trying to look like a businessman on his business card. But then there is the time frame of that phone number. From my late 20th Century and early 21st Century perspective, this looks like a phone number that would just be usable around Corbin, Kentucky. But then the Kentucky title of Colonel is used for ambassadors of the state, which makes me think this a card is for the rest of the country. Ah, if I remember my old movies correctly, back then direct dialing from coast to coast wasn't easily done. In the 1920s, a Louisvillian would crank up the phone, and say, "Operator, get me Corbin 1580" for a "station-to-station" call. AT&T invented the area code and ten digit direct dialing system in 1947. So, without an area code for the central office or without a prefix code, this looks to be a pre-1947 number in which an operator would need to be called in order to talk with someone in the station that handled phone numbers around Corbin, which by the way is in the foothills of Appalachia, Eastern Kentucky. The small chicks under the brand name are interesting. I wonder how long that lasted. Still, this business card info looks awkwardly minimal. There's no address. There's no area code or prefix. There is no position listed in the company for Sanders — e.g. president, owner, founder, etc. I'm assuming minimal gives the perspective of being very important, which in fairness, he was but less so back in the 40s.

I'll need to research this.
Usage Terms: Public domain