Does anyone have any photos of these? I think they look pretty neat. 

Somewhere here on LG are photos of U-bend style ceiling fixtures in an abandoned building . They look kinda like ceiling fans as the lamps are positioned in a manner resembling fan blades . Now , the lamps are not normal u-bends . they were much longer . I believe these were from somewhere between the 30's to 50's .

I believe they were also cold-cathode tubes instead of the standard hot cathode.

They were called Cutler Mirac-O-lite. The pictures I've seen shown it either using four or six lamps. IIRC they use special cold cathode lamps.

I think more than one manufacturer made these lights as a subway station in Toronto used to have them and it was built in 1978. Unfortunately they were replaced with standard 2x2 surface drop dish troffers. This was probably due to difficulty in finding parts. 

 

These fixtures had some autotransformer ballasts with an OCV of well over 1000v!!!!