Don Buchla, an instrument...

...builder, musician and composer who invented the Buchla Box, died at age 79. From his New York Times obit:

The Buchla Box also supplied sound for the writer Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, the freewheeling multimedia happenings at which attendees, including Mr. Buchla, used LSD. Mr. Buchla was at the electronic controls for sound and visuals at the Trips Festival in San Francisco in 1966, a pinnacle of the psychedelic era. In his book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” (1968), Tom Wolfe wrote about the “Buchla electronic music machine screaming like a logical lunatic.”

If you haven't read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) by all means get to it. And while you're at it, The Right Stuff (1979) and From Bauhaus to Our House (1981) are also good.