RAND Corporation's 1954 design for a home computer?

Scientist from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "home computer" could look like in the year 2004. However, the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.*

Although the photograph displayed could represent what some people in the early 1950s contemplated a "home computer" might look like (based on the technology of the day), it isn't, as the accompanying text claims, a RAND Corporation illustration from 1954 of a prototype "home computer." The picture is actually an entry submitted to an image modification competition, taken from an original photo of a submarine maneuvering room console found on U.S. Navy web site, converted to grayscale, and modified to replace a modern display panel and TV screen with pictures of a decades-old teletype/printer and television (as well as to add the gray-suited man to the left-hand side of the photo). http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp

The photo at the very top of this page was forwarded to me by a friend November 29, 2004 with the accompanying caption just below it. I found this second photo, just above, on the hoax buster website cited above. It also included the following variation to the narrative that arrived on the email I received:
* A November 2004 version of this piece opens with: "This article is from an issue of 1954 Popular
   Mechanics magazine forecasting the possibility of 'home computers' in 50 years. It appears that the
   'mouse' replaced the steering wheel . . ."
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