You have to keep in mind, those meters were built mainly for education purpose. When the teacher is doing some experiments in front of the class, e.g.
demonstrating inducting current in a coil, so those meters were used to show the measurements and everybody in the class was able to see it.
Our school had meters for front of class demonstrations that looked like this:
(sorry, best quality image that I could find)
The scale was on a metal sheet that slid in and out of the meter, and had a shunt or dropper resistor on the scale that made a circuit as you inserted it. So one meter and case could work as either a voltmeter or ammeter for as many ranges as you had cards for.
The ones the students were given to use for experiments were like the smaller ones shown above, a standard meter movement in a sloping plastic case with a couple of 4mm binding posts on top.
I still rather like the latter, and a while back I was thinking about acquiring some for real, contemporary bench use. Sometimes an indication is all you need and the gentle waving of a meter needle can sometimes convey more useful information about what's actually going on then a digital display that's shooting up and down.