Sampler
An instrument that plays back recorded sound instead of synthesising it — each key triggers a recording, pitched to the right note.
The Fairlight CMI of 1979 was the first commercial one: Australian, and priced like a house. The E-mu Emulator halved that in 1981, and in 1988 Roger Linn and Akai built the MPC60, a sampler with drum pads and a sequencer that more or less defined hip-hop production for a decade. Limited memory was part of the sound: a few seconds at 12 bits forced short loops and gritty resolution that people later emulated on purpose.
The basic craft is mapping samples across key ranges and velocity zones, looping the sustained portion and shaping the result with filters and an ADSR envelope. Transposing by changing playback speed also makes the sound shorter and brighter, hence the practice of recording several notes per instrument. SoundFont and today's software samplers inside a DAW are the same idea with the memory limit removed.