Posted by Mark Darrah on April 19, 2000 at 12:31:17:
While at the convention, Bruce met a man who had a HUGE book with him. It turns out to be the wood outfitting details plans for Olympic and Titanic!
Apparently, it was one of those "found it in the attic" stories. The man's father had bought it many years ago, and it had sat in the attic since then.
Anyway, one of the plans shows the details of the trim around the Grand Staircase dome. As it turns out, there was a lip around the base of the dome, and they used concealed lighting along that lip. I had always wondered about that, because if you look at pgs. 98-99 of "Anatomy", there is a drawing of the "dome" of some other H & W ship. If you look closely, you will see a notation that specifies hidden lighting around the rim.
As further evidence, Simon Mills reports that while the dome of Britannic is broken, the cover is still in place, and there is no evidence of lighting fixtures inside the cover. So it appears that the dome was only lit from the inside, NOT backlit. The central chandelier was probably enough to fill in the middle. Personally, I think it would have been a very attractive effect at night, much better than back-lit panels.