 Appleby's overall conclusion was that Loomis had successfully made multiple wireless telegraphic transmissions beginning in 1866, and, based on his analysis of Loomis notebooks, he had inadvertently created a "spark-gap" radio transmitter, similar to what early radio inventors would employ a few decades later.According to Appleby, the elevated wires would have created electrical sparks (despite the fact that Loomis had contrasted the crashing of lightning with his own system, which he stated would work "innocuously and without jar"), which in turn produced radiotelegraphic transmissions.