Solar-terrestrial research and space weather: Heliosphere and geospace investigations into solar cycle 23

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the experimental investigations by W.H.Barlow (during two weeks in May 1847) to cry to understand the reasons for the appearances of "spontaneous" currents on the wires of several electrical telegraph circuits that were in operation in England at the time. The disturbances of the telegraph on several occasions during that year were the first published evidence of the effects of solar-produced phenomena on human technologies, even though the role of the sun in the disturbances was not recognized for many years after this. Data from the array of solar-terrestrial spacecraft now flying in the solar system, as well as from a number of strategically-located ground arrays of instruments, are providing key information - as the 23rd solar cycle develops - that are central to the development of better understanding of the coupled Sun-heliosphere-geospace system and its often unexpected influences on human technologies. This contribution looks forward to the next solar maximum by also looking retrospectively to the effects of the Earth's space environment on technologies of the past and of the influences of space weather on technologies of the present.