He returned to his home town of Minden to find that the city had put the one-room school house he attended as a child up for auction.

Warp, who is responsible for the vast majority of the collection, purchased anything, across North America, that represented the daily use of American technology.

This includes, but is not limited to, early cars (more than 350 are on display) and airplanes; a Wurlitzer Caliola; tractors and other farm implements; appliances (televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, mechanical banks, pencils, etc.

); and an art collection that features William Henry Jackson paintings and a set of John Rogers plaster sculptures.

The buildings that house the collections are mostly from Nebraska, and they are set up to loosely resemble a village, organized around a central green.