Colonel Harlan Sanders: A Pressure Fryer, a Utah Diner and KFC at 65

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Harlan Sanders was born in 1890 near Henryville, Indiana, lost his father at five and was cooking for his siblings by seven while his mother worked at a canning plant. He left home at 13 and drifted through jobs as a farmhand, streetcar conductor, railroad fireman, insurance salesman and ferry operator, and practiced law in justice of the peace courts, where he got into a brawl with his own client. In 1930, at 40, he took over a Shell station on U.S. Route 25 in North Corbin, Kentucky, and began serving travelers from his own dining table. Governor Ruby Laffoon made him an honorary Kentucky Colonel in 1936, and he grew the business into the 142-seat Sanders Court & Café.

Pan-frying took 35 minutes, so after commercial pressure cookers arrived in 1939 he modified one to fry chicken in under 10, and in 1940 he settled his blend of 11 herbs and spices. When Interstate 75 bypassed Corbin in 1955, he auctioned his property and, at 65 and living on a $105 Social Security check, drove town to town licensing his recipe for four cents, later five, per chicken. His 1952 trial licensee, Pete Harman of South Salt Lake, Utah, had a sign painter named Don Anderson coin Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Harman introduced the bucket meal in 1957. By 1963 there were 600 locations. Sanders sold in 1964 for $2 million to investors led by John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack C. Massey, but stayed on as quality controller.

• Sanders adopted the white suit partly so flour stains would not show.
• Harman's 1957 bucket held 14 pieces of chicken, rolls and a pint of gravy, and he trademarked It's finger lickin' good.
• Corporate management backed L.S. Hartzog pressure fryers, which lacked oil filtration and sometimes exploded.
• Sanders championed Winston Shelton's 1969 Collectramatic fryer, and Brown's own father used it against his son's orders.
• When Sanders died in 1980 at 90, the chain had about 6,000 locations and $2 billion in annual sales.