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

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Summary

Description
English: 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.
Date (photographed)
Source https://www.flickr.com/photos/bluemaumau/36306711474/
Author Mr. Blue MauMau
Camera location36° 57′ 35.47″ N, 84° 05′ 37.58″ W  Heading=166.85929648241° Kartographer map based on OpenStreetMap.View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMapinfo

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This image was originally posted to Flickr by Blue MauMau at https://flickr.com/photos/108982746@N06/36306711474. It was reviewed on 6 November 2021 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

6 November 2021

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between 1929 and 1977, inclusive, without a copyright notice. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart as well as a detailed definition of "publication" for public art.

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Colonel Sanders' business card, c. late 1940s

36°57'35.471"N, 84°5'37.579"W

heading: 166.85929648241205 degree

0.025 second

4.15 millimetre

image/jpeg

f79b4a28ee0a3adb00e51210d9336a19eb609f19

823,746 byte

1,785 pixel

2,976 pixel

8 September 2017

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