The first instruments were very crude and relied on electrostatic repulsion of two foils in a glass jar. You probably have seen drawings of these in the introductory physics books.
Once the connection between current and magnetic field was discovered, the current meter with the rotating pointer was invented. At the same time Ohm's law was used to make volt meters with a resistor in series with the current meter. Various improvements on this mechanical readout were made to include shaping the fixed magnetic field poles for a linear scale factor and using a wire whose torque was the opposing force on the pointer rotation.
These measurement functions were combined in a single instrument called a multimeter which had a mechanical switch to cut in series and shunt resistors and rectifier diodes to select the scale factor. The most famous one is the Simpson brand 260 which is still in production after 65 years or so.