And that reminds me of yet another story! Along similar lines . . .
The Smithsonian museum of History and Technology opened in 1964 and not long after my father took me there. We went straight for the section with trains and ships, which has both models and actual steam locomotives and the like. In the marine technology section, next to it, they have many ship models and also actual equipment such as blocks from sailing ships, sextants, and so on, and a two story exhibit of an engine room circa 1920 with a chunk of a triple expansion marine steam engine. He said "good grief, I used to work on one of those."
Flash forward 25 years to 1990. I took my daughters to the same museum, but this time we headed for the computer department, which has components from a Hollerith machine, ENIAC, old telephones and so on. And, already in 1990, it had an exhibit of microcomputers such as the Altair 8800 and the Apple II and a wax dummy of a long-haired geeky looking programmer circa 1976 at a blackboard at the Home Brew Computer Club meeting. And a TRS-80 (Trash 80). I said, "good grief, I used to have one of those." Not to mention the hair.
Incidentally, the Smithsonian gets the story of the "first computer bug" right, unlike many sources. The term long predates computers. See:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object.cfm?key=35&objkey=30 - Jed
