Were the lights on board the Titanic less bright than the lights on today's cruise ships?

[Dan Kappes]

I would think so. Technology has changed so much in the past century.

On another note, James Cameron found out when he was making the movie replica that the Grand Staircase was small by today's standards. The average human body has gotten bigger since 1912.

 

[Robert T. Paige]

Electricity and electric lamps were fairly new in 1912 and I would expect the lighting to be considerably less brighter than
today's.

 

[Steven Christian]

According to various sources Titanic/Olympic were fitted with bulb sizes rangeing from 16 to 100 candle power. Its very hard to convert the old style candle power rating to todays ratings because of so many different variables. But a close ball park figure is that a 100 candle power bulb is approx equal to about a 60 watt incandecent bulb. In the 1940's they went to a rating system using candela's then later to watts for output. Now the industry is switching to lumens for bulb output because of power efficeny per output. A 12 watt LED will put out as much lumens as a 100 watt incandecent...hence the switch of rating systems. But all that aside Titanic must have been a marvle to many of the passengers. Many (mostly 3rd class) came from villages that still used oil lamps. Even a lot of the rural areas in the US didn't get electrified untill the 1930's. Yes Titanic's lighting was dimmer than todays ships but she was state of the art for her time.

ELECTRICITY