Short answers, pulled from the story.
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument that records or loads portions of sound recordings and plays them back under musical control. Samples can be triggered by a MIDI keyboard, sequencer, electronic drum pad, or other device, and a single sample can be pitch-shifted across musical scales and chords. Most samplers also offer filters, effects, and modulation capabilities that allow the original sound to be modified.
The earliest digital sampling was done on the EMS Musys system, developed by Peter Grogono, David Cockerell, and Peter Zinovieff at their London studio in Putney around 1969, with actual sampling work carried out in 1971-1972. The first commercially available sampling synthesizer was the Computer Music Melodian, developed in 1976 by Harry Mendell. The first polyphonic digital sampling synthesizer was the Australian Fairlight CMI, first available in 1979.
The Fairlight CMI retailed for around $25,000 when it was released in 1979. The Synclavier System, manufactured by New England Digital, sold for an average of $200,000 to $300,000, with the highest price ever paid for one reaching about $500,000. Affordable samplers did not reach the market until the Ensoniq Mirage in 1985 and the E-mu Emax in 1986, both priced under $2,000.
The E-mu SP-1200, released in August 1987, popularized the use of digital samplers in hip-hop music. Its 12-bit sampling engine gave instruments warmth and drums a gritty punch. The Akai MPC60, released in 1988 and co-developed with Roger Linn, became the most influential sampler in hip-hop, introducing touch-sensitive trigger pads that defined the MPC line.
Notable users of the Fairlight CMI include Peter Gabriel, Herbie Hancock, Trevor Horn, Art of Noise, Yello, Pet Shop Boys, Jean Michel Jarre, Duran Duran, and Kate Bush. Trevor Horn first used his Fairlight sampling techniques on Adventures in Modern Recording, the second album by his project The Buggles, and later applied them to productions for Grace Jones, Art of Noise, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
In 1989-32 megabytes of RAM cost $7,500. By 1999 the same amount cost $39, by 2009 it cost 38 cents, and by 2019 it cost roughly nine cents. This collapse in memory costs is why a modern piano sample library can range from 500 megabytes to 18 gigabytes, compared to a maximum of 28-120 megabytes available in the most capable machines of 1989.