ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth century, both skies and screens became readable to a mass audience with the publication of the first International Cloud Atlas and the first commercial film exhibition: on December 28, 1895, the Lumière brothers screened their short films in the Salon Indien of the Grand Café in Paris, 1 and the first edition of the photographic International Cloud Atlas appeared in 1896. Deeming 1896 the “International Year of the Clouds,” 2 the International Meteorological Society “realised that an understanding of the weather depended on coordinated observations across national boundaries—something that relied on agreed terminology” and “published a pictorial reference book to coincide with the 1896 International Meteorological Conference in Paris.” 3 Within one year, the same city hosts both the first film exhibition and the release of the first internationally conceived photographic means of reading the skies. These two events have more in common than geographical or calendar proximity.
