My very good friend, Jim Riggs, house organist at the Oakland
Paramount, and I had this conversation years and years ago.
Jim finally coined a term we now refer to simply as "MGV" --
"Maximum Gadget Value".

It explains the link and fascination of people with trains, theatre
organs, carousels, player pianos, etc.  It's like ants: find one and
there are surely more around you.

While in college, when I worked in our student computer lab as a
support tech, I also discovered there were a large percentage of Math
Majors / Music Minors _and_ Music Majors / Math Minors.  These were
also the students who were curious about my little theatre organ
projects that I would bring in and work on during 'slow time' in
the lab.

Gary Jones