The first synthesizer with a pitch wheel was the Minimoog, in 1970.
[1] Alternatively, pitch bend controllers on synthesizers may be implemented as a joystick, knob, or touch-sensitive ribbon.
[2] MIDI represents pitch bend as a 14-bit integer, allowing for 16,384 possible values.
General MIDI implementations default to a range of ±2 semitones.
This article relating to electronic musical instruments is a stub.