Absolutely, these were brand new pieces of technology. Remember too that the origins of these kinds of aircraft was the Second World War which had, particularly in Britain because of the Battle of Britain, turned airpower and pilots into icons of their age.

The test pilots of the late 1940s and 1950s, men like Neville Duke, Eric Brown, etc. were celebrities. Consider this, the Farnborough Airshow, in 1952, which was marred by tragedy when a DH.110 disintegrated and an engine hurtled into the crowd killing 29 people, the test pilot John Derry and the on-board flight test observer, attracted 120,000 spectators on the Saturday -- the day of the disaster. Even more people turned up the Sunday. This type of event, in terms of scale of attendance, is comparable today only to a major music festival.

If you're interested in this, I really enjoyed James Hamilton-Paterson's Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World (2011) which talks a lot about the sheer fascination people had with these machines.