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For Ørsted's experiment, place a long straight conducting wire close to and parallel with a freely moving horizontal compass needle. With no electric current, the needle follows the horizontal terrestrial magnetic field. Closing the circuit deflects it; reversing the electric current reverses the deflection, and moving the wire from above to below the needle also reverses the effect. For a long straight wire, the modern idealization iswith the circular direction given by the right-hand rule. These controls distinguish a magnetic action of the current from a fixed magnetized piece of wire or a mechanical disturbance.

Nobili's astatic galvanometer increases sensitivity in two ways. A coil with many turns multiplies the magnetic action of a given electric current. Two nearly equal magnetized needles are rigidly connected with opposite magnetic dipole moments and suspended by a fine thread. Their torques in the approximately uniform terrestrial field nearly cancel. In a common arrangement one needle lies inside the coil and the other above it, outside its strongest field, so the coil retains a substantial torque while the terrestrial restoring torque is reduced. A weak residual magnetic or suspension torque still provides a reproducible equilibrium; “astatic” means nearly cancelled terrestrial torque, not magnetic shielding. A museum instrument dated 1840 has many turns of fine wire and is identified with measurements of muscle currents.^[ref]

For weak physiological sources, use a long fine-wire winding with many turns, rather than the short thick winding appropriate to a low-resistance thermoelectric source. The physiological source commonly has a large effective internal resistance; a moderate added coil resistance is then outweighed by the gain in turns. This is a source-and-detector matching argument, not a claim that arbitrarily much wire always improves sensitivity.

For example, at fixed mean turn length and fixed copper winding volume, $R_{\mathrm{coil}}=a{N}^2$. For source electromotive force $\mathcal{E}$ and resistance $R_s$, the small-angle driving torque is proportional toDifferentiation gives its maximum at $\boxed{R_{\mathrm{coil}}=R_s}$. This simple optimal turn count for fixed winding volume model explains why high-source-resistance work favors more turns, while also exposing the limit. Actual instruments additionally trade response time, damping, geometry and source loading against their steady deflection.