On the other hand, Wilhelm Weber, in papers written in 1871,[4] built up his whole theory of electromagnetism on a basis which was practically identical with the modified Franklin theory and explained all the electrical phenomena exhibited by conductors, including thermo-electric and Peltier effects, on the assumption of two types of electrical constituents of atoms, one of which was very much more mobile than the other. Thus the hypothetical molecular current, which Ampere had imagined fifty years earlier to be continually flowing inside of molecules and thereby rendering these molecules little electromagnets, Weber definitely pictures to himself as the rotation of light, positive charges about heavy negative ones. His words are:
The relation of the two particles as regards their motions is determined by the ratio of their masses
and
, on the assumption that in
and
are included the masses of the ponderable atoms which are attached to the electrical atoms. Let