FIRST EDITION. Title in French, English and German. The first edition consisted of plates of color photographs, which was then a new technology.
"In 1874, the year of the first International Meteorological Congress…important new efforts were initiated in the [field of cloud classification]. During the succeeding 20 years constructive proposals were advanced in many countries by a large number of workers whose combined efforts led in 1896 to publication of the International Cloud-Atlas".
This atlas documents an early cooperative scientific investigation on an international level. U.S. observations were made at Blue Hill Observatory, south of Boston."

The first edition featured printed color plates, rather than hand-colored plates. Most of the plates were color photographs, but also some paintings. A cirrus cloud was the first type of cloud illustrated, from a color photograph.
At the time, color photography was new, complicated, and expensive. Consequently, the Clouds Commission was unable to obtain suitable color photographs of all the cloud types, and they selected paintings to use as substitutes.

The first edition was inspired in part by the observation of the English meteorologist Ralph Abercromby that clouds were of the same general kinds everywhere in the world. Abercromby and Hildebrandsson developed a new classification of clouds that was published in an earlier atlas, the 1890 Cloud Atlas by Hildebrandsson, Wladimir Köppen, and Georg von Neumayer.

The atlas consists of color plates of clouds, and text in English, French, and German. Consequently, it had separate title pages in each language.
Our copy has the French title pasted on the cover of the folder, but is missing the 8pp. French text, and text pages for the other languages, although the copy in the Bibliothèque de Météo-France, is also lacking the other language sheets.

International Cloud Atlas has been published in multiple editions since 1896, including 1911, 1932, 1939, 1956, 1975, and 1995.
The 1932 edition was titled International Atlas of Clouds and of States of the Sky . The 1939 edition modified the title to International Atlas of Clouds and Types of Skies. The 1956 edition was the first published in two volumes, separating text and plates. This lowered costs and facilitated the publication of translated editions. It was translated into Polish in 1959 (Międzynarodowy atlas chmur; atlas skrócony) and Norwegian in 1958 (Internasjonalt skyatlas 1956).
A Dutch translation was published in 1967 (Wolkenatlas. Bewerkt naar de Internationale verkorte wolkenatlas van de Meteorologische Wereldorganisatie).