A magnetic compass needle, brought close to a straight wire carrying an electric current, aligned itself perpendicular to the wire . More precisely , the alignment is tangential to a circle which has the wire as centre , and which has its plane perpendicular to the wire. Oersted also notice that reversing the direction of current nearly reversed the direction in which the needle pointed i.e. needle pointing N-S turned to S-N. from such observation he conclude that a magnetic field is associated with an electric current and that it is this magnetic field which tends to align a magnetic needle much as the earth's magnetic field dose.
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