title: ASEAN Football Federation

text: AFF was founded on 31 January 1984 by the meeting in Jakarta of 6 founding member are Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand. The idea of founding the federation came from the initial meeting of founding the sub-continental football association in Bangkok in 1982 that was attended by Hamzah Abu Samah, Peter Velappan, Hans Pandelaki, Fernando G. Alvarez, Pisit Ngampanich, Teo Chong Tee and Yap Boon Chuan. Other nations that have joined the federation since have been Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (all in 1996), East Timor in 2004, and Australia in 2013.


title: ASEAN Football Federation

text: The Mekong Club Championship started in the 2014 season and includes the champions from 5 of the 6 countries through which the Mekong river flows (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam). The ASEAN Club Championship has stopped rolling since 2005.


title: ASEAN Football Federation

text: Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah, who is also chairman of the Awards Selection Committee, said that as football in the region continued to develop and mature, the commitment demonstrated by ASEAN’s finest needed to be acknowledged.


title: UEFA Youth League

text: The UEFA Youth League is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) since 2013. In its current format, it is contested by the youth teams of the clubs competing in the UEFA Champions League group stage, plus the domestic youth champions of the best-ranked national associations.


title: UEFA Youth League

text: The semi-finals and final matches have been traditionally played at the Colovray Stadium in Nyon, Switzerland. The winners are awarded the Lennart Johansson Trophy, named in honour of the former UEFA president.


title: UEFA Youth League

text: The most successful teams are Barcelona and Chelsea, with two titles each. Chelsea won back-to-back titles in 2015 and 2016, while Barcelona won the inaugural season of the competition and clinched their second trophy in 2018. The current champions are Portuguese side Benfica, who beat Red Bull Salzburg 6–0 in the 2022 final.


title: UEFA Youth League

text: In May 2010, UEFA organised a match, referred to as the "UEFA Under-18 Challenge", between the under-18 teams of Bayern Munich and Internazionale, three days prior to the UEFA Champions League Final between the respective senior sides. Internazionale won the match 2–0 with two goals from Denis Alibec. The match was part of "UEFA Grassroots Day", and acted as an inspiration for the UEFA Youth League.


title: UEFA Youth League

text: The teams in the first tournament, 2013–14 UEFA Youth League, played a group stage with the same composition and calendar as the 2013–14 UEFA Champions League group stage, and was held on a 'trial basis'.


title: UEFA Youth League

text: The eight group-winners and eight runners-up from group stage then participated in a knockout phase. Unlike the UEFA Champions League, the knockout phase had single-leg ties, with the semi-finals and final played at neutral venues.


title: UEFA Youth League

text: In April 2014, Barcelona became the first champion, beating Benfica by 3–0 in the final-four held in Nyon.


title: UEFA Youth League

text: After a two-year trial period, the UEFA Youth League became a permanent UEFA competition starting from the 2015–16 season, with the tournament expanded from 32 to 64 teams to allow the youth domestic champions of the top 32 associations according to their UEFA country coefficients to also participate. The 32 UEFA Champions League group stage youth teams retain the group stage format, with the group winners advancing to the round of 16 and the runners-up advancing to the play-offs. The 32 youth domestic champions play two rounds of two-legged ties, with the eight winners advancing to the play-offs, where they play a single match at home against the Champions League path runners-up. The round of 16 onwards retain the same format of single-leg ties as before.


title: UEFA Youth League

text: Up to four matches per week (total 39 matches per-season) are streamed through UEFA.tv channel in the unsold markets with highlights available in all territories.


title: Göttingen

text: Göttingen (, , ; ) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911.


title: Göttingen

text: The origins of Göttingen lay in a village called "Gutingi, "first mentioned in a document in 953 AD. The city was founded northwest of this village, between 1150 and 1200 AD, and adopted its name. In medieval times the city was a member of the Hanseatic League and hence a wealthy town.


title: Göttingen

text: Today, Göttingen is famous for its old university ("Georgia Augusta", or "Georg-August-Universität"), which was founded in 1734 (first classes in 1737) and became the most visited university of Europe. In 1837, seven professors protested against the absolute sovereignty of the kings of Hanover; they lost their positions, but became known as the "Göttingen Seven". Its alumni include some well-known historical figures: the Brothers Grimm, Heinrich Ewald, Wilhelm Eduard Weber and Georg Gervinus. Also, German Chancellors Otto von Bismarck and Gerhard Schröder attended law school at the Göttingen University. Karl Barth held his first professorship here. Some of the most famous mathematicians in history, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann and David Hilbert, were professors at Göttingen.


title: Göttingen

text: Like other university towns, Göttingen has developed its own quaint traditions. On the day they are awarded their doctorate degrees, students are drawn in handcarts from the Great Hall to the "Gänseliesel"-Fountain in front of the Old Town Hall. There they have to climb the fountain and kiss the statue of the "Gänseliesel" ("goose girl"). This practice is actually forbidden, but the law is not enforced. The statue is considered the most kissed girl in the world.


title: Göttingen

text: Nearly untouched by Allied bombing in World War II, the inner city of Göttingen is now an attractive place to live with many shops, cafes and bars. For this reason, many university students live in the inner city and give Göttingen a youthful feel. In 2003, 45% of the inner city population was only between 18 and 30 years of age.


title: Göttingen

text: Commercially, Göttingen is noted for its production of optical and precision-engineered machinery, being the seat of the light microscopy division of Carl Zeiss, Inc., and a main site for Sartorius AG which specialises in bio-technology and measurement equipment—the region around Göttingen advertises itself as "Measurement Valley".


title: Göttingen

text: Unemployment in Göttingen was 12.6% in 2003 and is now 7% (March 2014). The city's railway station to the west of the city centre is on Germany's main north–south railway.


title: Göttingen

text: Göttingen has two professional basketball teams; both the men's and women's teams play in the "Basketball-Bundesliga". For the 2022–23 season, both teams will play in the 1st division.


title: Göttingen

text: The origins of Göttingen can be traced back to a village named "Gutingi" to the immediate south-east of the present city. The name of the village probably derives from a small stream, called the "Gote", that once flowed through it. Since the ending "-ing" denoted "living by", the name can be understood as "along the Gote". Archaeological evidence points towards a settlement as early as the 7th century. It is first historically mentioned in a document by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I in 953 AD, in which he gives some of his belongings in the village to the Moritz monastery in Magdeburg. Archaeological findings point to extensive commercial relations with other regions and a developed craftsmanship in this early period.


title: Göttingen

text: In its early days, "Gutingi" was overshadowed by "", historically documented from the year 915 AD as a newly built fortress, lying opposite "Gutingi" on a hill west of the River Leine. It was subsequently used as an Ottonian imperial palace, with 18 visits of kings and emperors documented between 941 and 1025 AD. The last Holy Roman emperor to use the fortress of "Grona" (said to have been fond of the location), Heinrich II (1002–1024), also had a church built in the neighbouring "Gutingi", dedicated to Saint Alban. The current church building that occupies this site, the St. Albani Church, was built in 1423.


title: Göttingen

text: The fortress then lost its function as a palace in 1025, after Henry II died there, having retreated to it in ill health. It was subsequently used by the lords of Grone. The fortress was destroyed by the citizens of Göttingen between 1323 and 1329, and finally razed to the ground by Duke Otto I during his feuds with the city of Göttingen in 1387.


title: Göttingen

text: With time, a trading settlement started to form at the river crossing of the Leine to the west of the village, from which it took its name. It is this settlement that was eventually given city rights. The original village remained recognisable as a separate entity until about 1360, at which time it was incorporated within the town's fortification.


title: Göttingen

text: It is likely the present city was founded between 1150 and 1180, although the exact circumstances are not known. It is presumed that Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, founded it. The configuration of the streets in the oldest part of the town is in the shape of a pentagon, and it has been proposed that the inception of the town followed a planned design. At this time, the town was known by the name "Gudingin" or also "Gotingen". Its inhabitants obeyed welfish ownership and ruling rights, and the first Göttingen burghers are mentioned then, indicating that Göttingen was already organised as a true city. It was not, however, a Free Imperial City (), but subject to the Welf dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Henry the Elder (V) of Brunswick, eldest son of Henry the Lion and brother of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV, is given as the lord over Göttingen between 1201 and 1208. The original Welf residency in the town consisted of a farm building and the stables of the Welf dukes, which occupied the oldest part of the city's fortifications built prior to 1250. In its early days, Göttingen became involved in the conflicts of the Welfs with their enemies. The initial conflicts in the first decades of the 13th century benefited the burghers of Göttingen, who were able to use the political and military situation to be courted by various parties, thus forcing the Welf town lords to make certain compromises with the town. In a document from 1232, Duke Otto the Child restored to the citizens of Göttingen the rights that they had held at the time of his uncles Otto IV and Henry the Elder of Brunswick. These included privileges concerning self-governance of the town, protection of traders, and facilitating trade. At this time Göttingen possessed a city council of burghers. The names of council members are first given in a document from 1247.


title: Göttingen

text: The area secured by the initial fortification included the old market place, the old town hall, the two main churches, St. Johannes ("St John's") and St. Jacobi ("St. James's"), the smaller church St. Nikolai ("St. Nicholas's"), as well as the large Weender Straße, Groner Straße and Rote Straße ("red street"). Outside the fortification in front of the "Geismar" city gate lay the old village with the Church of St. Alban, which was subsequently known as "Geismarer altes Dorf" (old "Geismar" village). This village was only to a limited extent under Welfish control and thus could not be included in the town's privileges and fortifications.


title: Göttingen

text: The town was initially protected by a rampart, as of the late 13th century, then also by walls on top of the mound-like ramparts. Of these, only one tower with a short stretch of the wall survives in the "Turmstraße" (tower street). This protected area included maximally 600 m by 600 m, or about 25 hectares. This made it smaller than contemporary Hanover, but larger than the neighbouring Welfish towns of Northeim, Duderstadt and Hann. Münden.


title: Göttingen

text: The "Gote" stream that flowed south of the walls of the town was connected to the River Leine via a channel at about this time and the waterway has since been known as the Leine Canal.


title: Göttingen

text: After the death of Otto the Child in 1257, his sons Albert I of Brunswick (the Great) and Johann inherited their father's territories. Duke Albrecht I governed for his brother, a minor, at first. Subsequently, the brothers agreed to divide the territory between themselves in 1267, effective 1269. The city of Göttingen went to Albert I, and was inherited by his son Duke Albert II "the Fat" in 1286. Albert II chose Göttingen as his residence and moved into the Welf residency, which he rebuilt into a fortress known as the "Ballerhus", after which the "Burgstraße" (fortress street) is named.


title: Göttingen

text: Albert II attempted to gain further control over the economically and politically rapidly growing town by founding a "new town" () west of the original town, across the Leine Canal and outside of the Groner City Gate. This competing settlement consisted of a single street, no more than 80 yards long, with houses on either side of the street. The Duke, however, could not prevent Göttingen's westward expansion nor the success of the Göttingen City Council in effectively checking any hope of economic development in the "Neustadt". The St. Marien Church ("St. Mary's") was built to the south of the "Neustadt" which, together with all adjoining farm buildings, was given to the Teutonic Knights in 1318.


title: Göttingen

text: After the failure of the "new town", the city council bought up the uncomfortable competition to the west in 1319 for three hundred Marks, and obtained a promise from the Duke that he would not erect any fortress within a mile of the town.


title: Göttingen

text: Two monasteries were also founded on the edge of the town at the end of the 13th century. To the east, in the area of today's "Wilhelmsplatz", a Franciscan monastery was built as early as 1268, according to the city chronicler Franciscus Lubecus. Since the Franciscans walked barefoot as part of their vow of poverty, they were known colloquially as "the barefoot people", hence the name "Barfüßerstraße" (Barefoot People's Street) for the road that led to the monastery. In 1294, Albert the Fat permitted the founding of a Dominican monastery along the Leine Canal opposite the "Neustadt", for which the "Paulinerkirche" ("Pauline church"), completed in 1331, was constructed.


title: Göttingen

text: Jews settled in Göttingen in the late 13th century. On 1 March 1289, the Duke gave the City Council permission to allow the first Jew, Moses, to settle inside the town limits. The subsequent Jewish population lived predominantly close to St. James's Church on the "Jüdenstraße".


title: Göttingen

text: After Albert the Fat's death in 1318, Göttingen passed to Otto the Mild (d. 1344), who ruled over both the "Principality of Göttingen" () and the territory of Brunswick. These dukes joined Göttingen and surrounding towns in battles against aristocratic knights in the surroundings of Göttingen, in the course of which the citizens of Göttingen succeeded in destroying the fortress of Grone between 1323 and 1329, as well as the fortress of Rosdorf. Since Otto the Mild died without leaving any children, his brothers Magnus and Ernest divided the land between themselves. Ernest I received Göttingen, the poorest of all the Welf principalities, which was to remain separate from Brunswick for a long time to come. At this time, the territory consisted of the regions formerly owned by Northeim, the towns of Göttingen, Uslar, Dransfeld, Münden, Gieselwerder and half of Moringen. Not much is known about the rule of Duke Ernest I, but it is generally assumed that he continued to fight against aristocratic knights.


title: Göttingen

text: Ernest I was succeeded after his death in 1367 by his son Otto I of Göttingen (the Evil; German: "der Quade") (d. 1394), who initially lived in the city's fortress and attempted to make it a permanent Welf residency. The epithet "the Evil" came from Otto I's incessant feuds. Breaking with the policies of his predecessors, he frequently aligned himself with the aristocratic knights of the neighbourhood in battles against the cities, whose growing power disturbed him. Under Otto the Evil, Göttingen gained a large degree of independence. After losing control of the provincial court at the Leineberg to Göttingen in 1375, Otto finally tried to impose his influence on Göttingen in 1387, but with little success. In April 1387, Göttingen's citizens stormed and destroyed the fortress within the city's walls. In retaliation, Otto destroyed villages and farms in the town's surroundings. However, Göttingen's citizens gained a victory over the Duke's army in a battle between the villages of Rosdorf and Grone, under their leader Moritz of Uslar, forcing Otto to acknowledge the independence of the town and its surrounding properties. 1387 thus marks an important turning point in the history of the town. Göttingen's relative autonomy was further strengthened under Otto's successor Otto II "the One-eyed" of Göttingen (), not least because the Welf line of Brunswick-Göttingen died out with Otto II, and the resulting questions surrounding his succession after his abdication in 1435 destabilized the regional aristocracy.


title: Göttingen

text: After Duke Otto I of Göttingen relinquished his jurisdiction over Jews to the town of Göttingen in the years 1369–70, conditions for Jews greatly deteriorated, and several bloody persecutions and evictions from the town followed. Between 1460 and 1599, no Jews lived in Göttingen at all.


title: Göttingen

text: The trend towards ever diminishing Welf influence over the town continued until the end of the 15th century, although the town officially remains a Welf property. Nevertheless, it is counted in some contemporaneous documents among the Imperial Free Cities.


title: Göttingen

text: The 14th and 15th centuries thus represent a time of political and economic power expansion, which is also reflected in the contemporary architecture. The expansion of the St. Johannis Church to a Gothic hall church began in the first half of the 14th century. As of 1330, a Gothic structure also replaced the smaller St Nikolai Church ("St. Nicholas's"). After completion of the work on St John's Church, the rebuilding of St James's Church was begun in the second half of the 14th century. The original, smaller church that preceded this building was probably initiated by Henry the Lion or his successor, and functioned as a fortress chapel to the city fortress that lay immediately behind it. The representative old town hall was built between 1366 and 1444.


title: Göttingen

text: Around 1360, the town's fortifications were rebuilt to encompass now also the "new town" and the "old village". In the course of this construction work, the four city gates were moved farther out, and the town's area grew to roughly 75 hectares. The city council forged alliances with surrounding towns, and Göttingen joined the Hanseatic League in 1351 (see below). Göttingen also gained "Grona" (currently Grone) and several other surrounding villages in the Leine Valley.


title: Göttingen

text: The reason for the progressive increase in importance in the late Middle Ages was the growing economic strength of the town. This depended largely on its good connections with the north–south trade route, particularly the north–south trade route that followed the Leine Valley, which greatly aided the local textile industry in particular. Next to the guild of linen weavers, the guild of wool weavers gained in importance. The wool for the weaving originated in the immediate surroundings of the town, where up to 3000 sheep and 1500 lambs were kept. Woollen cloth was successfully exported all the way to the Netherlands and Lübeck. From 1475, textile production was augmented by the addition of new weavers who brought novel weaving techniques to Göttingen and consolidated the position of the town as a textile exporter for three generations. Only at the end of the 16th century did the decline of the local textile industry occur when Göttingen could not compete anymore with cheap English textiles.


title: Göttingen

text: Göttingen's traders also profited from the important trade route between Lübeck and Frankfurt am Main. Göttingen's market became important beyond the region. Traders from other regions would come in great numbers four times a year. Göttingen also joined the Hanseatic League, to the first meeting of which it was invited in 1351. Göttingen's relationship with the Hanseatic League remained distant, however. As an inland town, Göttingen enjoyed the economic connections of the League, but it did not want to get involved in the politics of the alliance. Göttingen only became a paying member in 1426, and left as early as 1572.


title: Göttingen

text: After several dynastic splits and shifts in power that followed the death of Otto the One-Eyed, Duke Eric I "the Elder", Prince of Calenberg, annexed the principality of Göttingen, which became an integral part of the Principality of Calenberg. The town refused to pay homage to Eric I in 1504, and as a result, Eric I had the Emperor Maximilian I, declare the town of Göttingen outlawed. The subsequent tensions economically weakened Göttingen, leading to the town finally paying its homage to Eric I in 1512. Afterward the relationship between Eric and the town improved, because of Eric's financial dependence on Göttingen.


title: Göttingen

text: In 1584 the city came into the possession of the dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, also of the Welf dynasty, and in 1635 it passed to the house of Lüneburg, which ruled it thenceforth. In 1692 it was named as part of the indivisible territory Electoral State of Hanover (officially the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg).


title: Göttingen

text: The University of Göttingen was founded in 1737 by George II Augustus, who was king of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and prince-elector of Hanover. During the Napoleonic period, the city was briefly in the hands of the Prussia in 1806, turned over in 1807 to the newly created Napoleonic Kingdom of Westphalia, and returned to the State of Hanover in 1813 after Napoleon's defeat. In 1814 the prince-electors of Hanover were elevated to kings of Hanover and the Kingdom of Hanover was established. During the Austro-Prussian War (1866), the Kingdom of Hanover had attempted to maintain a neutral position. After Hanover voted in favor of mobilizing confederation troops against Prussia on 14 June 1866, Prussia saw this as a just cause for declaring war. In 1868, the Kingdom of Hanover was dissolved and Göttingen became part of the Prussian Province of Hanover. The Province of Hanover was disestablished in 1946.


title: Göttingen

text: In 1854 the city was connected to the new Hanoverian Southern Railway. Today, Göttingen railway station is served by (ICE) high-speed trains on the Hanover–Würzburg high-speed line.


title: Göttingen

text: During the 1930s, Göttingen housed the top math-physics faculty in the world, led by eight men, almost all Jews, who became known as the Göttingen eight. Their members included Leó Szilárd and Edward Teller. This faculty was not tolerable to the Reich, however, and the University of Göttingen suffered greatly as a result. The Göttingen eight were expelled, and these men were forced to emigrate to the West in 1938. Szilárd and Teller went on to become key members of the Manhattan Project team. Ironically, the Nazi insistence on "German physics" prevented German scientists from applying Albert Einstein's breakthrough insights to physics, a policy which stifled the further development of physics in Germany. After the end of World War II, the famous university had to be reorganised almost from scratch, especially in the physics, mathematics and chemistry departments, a process which has continued into the 21st century.


title: Göttingen

text: There was considerable support in the population of Göttingen for Hitler and Nazism from the start of the National Socialist era. As early as 1933 the Theaterplatz (Theater Square) was renamed Adolf-Hitlerplatz, and by the end of World War II 70 streets had been renamed in reference to the Nazi regime or military topics. The absorption of Nazi culture into the everyday life of the citizens of Göttingen has been documented by historian David Imhoof. The synagogue in Göttingen was destroyed during "Kristallnacht" on 9 November 1938. Many of the Jews were killed in Nazi German extermination camps. Also, there was a concentration camp for adolescents in Moringen, which was not liberated until 1945.


title: Göttingen

text: During the widespread British, Canadian and American air raids on Nazi Germany, Göttingen suffered comparatively little damage. Only about 2.1% of the city was destroyed. Beginning in July 1944, the air raids were sometimes heavier, but these mainly hit the area of the main railway station last on 7 April 1945. The historic old town of Göttingen remained practically undamaged.


title: Göttingen

text: The "Junkernschänke", a historic half-timbered house, was destroyed in a 1945 air-raid and the exterior was not properly reconstructed until the 1980s. Two of the churches ("Paulinerkirche" and "Johanniskirche") in the old town, and several buildings of the university, were heavily damaged. The Institute of Anatomy and 57 residential buildings, especially in Untere Masch Street in the centre of the city, were completely destroyed. Overall, only about 107 deaths were caused by the air raids, a comparatively small number. However, the neighbouring cities of Hanover and Brunswick experienced a much greater impact from the bombing raids. Kassel was destroyed several times.


title: Göttingen

text: Because the city had many hospitals, those hospitals had to take care of up to four thousand wounded Wehrmacht soldiers and airmen during World War II. Göttingen was also fortunate in that before troops of the U.S. Army arrived in Göttingen on 8 April 1945, all of the Wehrmacht's combat units had departed from this area, hence Göttingen experienced no heavy ground fighting, artillery bombardments or other major combat.


title: Göttingen

text: The Göttingen Studios were a significant centre of film production in West Germany from 1948 to 1961. In a reform in 1973 the district of Göttingen was enlarged by incorporating the dissolved districts of Duderstadt and Hannoversch Münden.


title: Göttingen

text: Prior to the period of German romanticism, a group of German poets that had studied at this university between 1772 and 1776, formed the Göttinger Hainbund or ""Dichterbund"" ('circle of poets'). Being disciples of Klopstock, they revived the folksong and wrote lyric poetry of the Sturm und Drang period. Their impact was essential on romanticism in the German-speaking area and on folklore in general.


title: Göttingen

text: Since the 1920s, the town has been associated with the revival of interest in the music of George Frideric Handel. The Göttingen International Handel Festival is held each summer with performances in the Stadthalle Göttingen and a number of churches.


title: Göttingen

text: The city is home to several ensembles such as the Göttinger Sinfonie Orchester or the Göttingen Boys' Choir, which are also performing nationwide.


title: Göttingen

text: In the mid-1960s, the song named after the city by the French singer Barbara created a considerable popular impetus towards post-war Franco-German reconciliation. A street in the city – Barbarastraße – is named after her.


title: Göttingen

text: Because of the city's long association with academics and scholarly journals, Göttingen has acquired the motto "Die Stadt, die Wissen schafft." The phrase is a pun: "Die Stadt der Wissenschaft" means 'the city of science,' "Die Stadt, die Wissen schafft" (identical pronunciation apart from "der" ~ "die") means 'the city that creates knowledge.'


title: Göttingen

text: Göttingen is a part of a tourist attraction in Germany, the German Fairy Tale Route (German: Deutsche Märchenstraße).


title: Göttingen

text: The city's population has increased since the Middle Ages. With the arrival of the early modern period, the growth rate greatly accelerated. The population peaked at 132,100 in 1985. In 2004, it stood at 129,466, of which around 24,000 were students.


title: Göttingen

text: The Göttingen bus system is run by the GöVB (Göttinger Verkehrsbetriebe). Buses run throughout the city and to the neighboring villages, as well as intercity bus services from the station Göttingen ZOB, adjacent to the railway station.


title: Göttingen

text: Göttingen railway station lies west of the medieval town center and provides links to several destinations in Germany.


title: Göttingen

text: Like most German cities, the town is bicycle-friendly, with bicycle paths throughout the commercial areas (except for in pedestrian-only shopping areas) and beyond. The time to pedal downtown from the outskirts is fifteen to twenty minutes.


title: Göttingen

text: After the Middle Ages, the area of Göttingen was part of the archbishopric of Mainz, and most of the population were Roman Catholic. Starting in 1528, the teachings of church reformer Martin Luther became more and more popular in the city. In 1529 the first Protestant sermon was preached in the Paulinerkirche, a former Dominican monastery church. For many centuries, nearly all of the population of the city were Lutherans. As of today, the area of Göttingen is part of the Lutheran Church of Hanover. Apart from this state church, there are several other Protestant churches in Göttingen, known as "Freikirchen". In 1746, Catholic services in Göttingen were resumed, at first only for the students of the new university, but a year later for all citizens who wished to attend. However, it was not until 1787 that the first Catholic church since the Reformation, St. Michael's, was built. In 1929 a second Catholic church, St. Paul's, was erected. Today, the major religions are Lutheran and Catholicism. In addition, there has been a Baptist congregation since 1894, a Mennonite congregation since 1946, as well as a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.


title: Göttingen

text: There is a documented Jewish community dating back to the 16th century. During the Third Reich, the synagogue was destroyed in the "Reichspogromnacht" on 9 November 1938, as were many others throughout Germany. The Jewish community was persecuted, and many of its members were murdered in Nazi concentration camps. In recent years, the Jewish community has again been flourishing, with the immigration of Jewish people from the states of the former Soviet Union. In 2004, the first Shabbat could be celebrated in the new Jewish community centre.


title: Göttingen

text: Finally, there are many Islamic congregations. Islam gained a foothold in Göttingen, as it did in other German cities, with the immigration of the Turkish "Gastarbeiter" during the "Wirtschaftswunder" in the 1960s and 1970s. They constitute the majority of Muslims in Göttingen. Other Muslims are of Arab origin or come from West Asia. There are two mosques in the city.


title: Göttingen

text: There is a secular trend in Germany, especially in Eastern Germany, but also in the West, where a growing number of people are not baptised or leave the church. This trend is especially noticeable since the 1990s, percentagewise between 1990 and 2014 the Protestants in Göttingen dropped from 56.2 to 40.6% and the Catholics dropped from 17.1 to 15.6%.


title: Göttingen

text: A town council with 24 councillors dates from the 12th century. In 1319 this council took control of the new city district ("Neustadt") just in front of the wall. The council election took place on the Mondays following Michaelmas (29 September). Starting in 1611 all citizens were able to elect the 24 councillors. Previously this right was restricted and depended on income and profession. Afterwards, the council elected the "Bürgermeister" (mayor). In 1669 the number of councillors was reduced to 16, and later to 12. In 1690 the city administration was reorganised again. Then the council consisted of the judge, two mayors, the city lawyer ("Syndikus"), the secretary and eight councillors. All of these were appointed by the government. During the Napoleonic era the mayor was called "Maire", and there was also a city council. In 1831 there was another reform of the constitution and the administration. The title of the mayor changed to "Oberbürgermeister". In the following decades there were more reforms to the city administration, which reflected the constitutional and territorial reorganisations of Germany. During the Third Reich the mayor was appointed by the Nazi Party.


title: Göttingen

text: In 1946 the authorities of the British Occupation Zone, to which Göttingen then belonged, introduced a communal constitution which reflected the British model.


title: Göttingen

text: The coat of arms of Göttingen shows in the top half three silver towers with red roofs on a field of blue. The lateral towers possess four windows each and are crowned by golden crosses. Around the central tower are four silver balls. The city towers represent the status as a city which has been granted certain rights. In the bottom field is a golden lion on a red field. This lion represents the lion of the Welf dynasty, which in its various branches ruled the area of Göttingen for 850 years. This coat of arms was first documented in 1278. The city has sometimes used a simpler one, consisting of a black capital "G" on a golden field, topped with a crown.


title: Göttingen

text: Göttingen has two professional theatres, the "Deutsches Theater" and the "Junges Theater". In addition, there is , which mostly presents student productions.


title: Göttingen

text: The local radio station Stadtradio Göttingen which is funded indirectly by the state of Lower Saxony broadcasts on FM 107.1 MHz and covers all parts of the city and some surrounding towns and villages. Its hourly news bulletins are the population's main source of local news. Additionally, the radio stations NDR 1, Hitradio Antenne Niedersachsen and Radio ffn provide specific local newscasts on their affiliate local frequencies.


title: Göttingen

text: The regional newspaper Hessisch-Niedersächsische Allgemeine has editorial offices in Göttingen. Its local news service is available for free on the internet and competes directly with the "Stadtradio" news service:


title: Göttingen

text: The Göttinger Tageblatt, is published by the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung on Mondays through Saturdays.


title: Miracle

text: A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific laws and accordingly gets attributed to some supernatural or praeternatural cause. Various religions often attribute a phenomenon characterized as miraculous to the actions of a supernatural being, (especially) a deity, a magician, a miracle worker, a saint, or a religious leader.


title: Miracle

text: Informally, English-speakers often use the word "miracle" to characterise any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood (e.g. "the miracle of childbirth"). Some coincidences may be seen as miracles.


title: Miracle

text: A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many writers to dismiss miracles as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position is expressed (for instance) by Thomas Jefferson, and the latter by David Hume. Theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, may work without, above, or against it as well.


title: Miracle

text: The word "miracle" is usually used to describe any beneficial event that is physically impossible or impossible to confirm by nature. Wayne Grudem defines a miracle as "a less common kind of God's activity in which he arouses people's awe and wonder and bears witness to himself." A deistic perspective of God's relation to the world defines a miracle as a direct intervention of God into the world.


title: Miracle

text: A miracle may just be fake information or simply a fictional story, rather than something that truly happened. A miracle experience may be due to cognitive errors (e.g. overthinking, jumping to conclusions) or psychological errors (e.g. hallucinations) of witnesses. Use of some drugs such as psychedelics (e.g. ecstasy) may produce similar effects to religious experiences.


title: Miracle

text: Statistically "impossible" events are often called miracles. For instance, when three classmates accidentally meet in a different country decades after having left school, they could consider this as "miraculous". However, a colossal number of events happen every moment on Earth; thus, extremely unlikely coincidences also happen every moment. Events that are considered "impossible" are therefore not impossible at allthey are just increasingly rare and dependent on the number of individual events. British mathematician J. E. Littlewood suggested that individuals should statistically expect one-in-a-million events ("miracles") to happen to them at the rate of about one per month. By his definition, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.


title: Miracle

text: A miracle is a phenomenon not explained by known laws of nature. Criteria for classifying an event as a miracle vary. Often a religious text, such as the Bible or Quran, states that a miracle occurred, and believers may accept this as a fact.


title: Miracle

text: The Aristotelian view of God has God as pure actuality and considers him as the prime mover doing only what a perfect being can do, think. Jewish neo-Aristotelian philosophers, who are still influential today, include Maimonides, Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon, and Gersonides. Directly or indirectly, their views are still prevalent in much of the religious Jewish community.


title: Miracle

text: In his "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" Spinoza claims that miracles are merely lawlike events of whose causes we are ignorant. We should not treat them as having no cause or of having a cause immediately available. Rather the miracle is for combating the ignorance it entails, like a political project.


title: Miracle

text: According to the philosopher David Hume, a miracle is "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent". The crux of his argument is this: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact which it endeavours to establish." By Hume's definition, a miracle goes against our regular experience of how the universe works. As miracles are single events, the evidence for them is always limited and we experience them rarely. On the basis of experience and evidence, the probability that miracle occurred is always less than the probability that it did not occur. As it is rational to believe what is more probable, we are not supposed to have a good reason to believe that a miracle occurred.


title: Miracle

text: According to the Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher "every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant".


title: Miracle

text: The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, following Hume and Johann Georg Hamann, a Humean scholar, agrees with Hume's definition of a miracle as a transgression of a law of nature, but Kierkegaard, writing as his pseudonym "Johannes Climacus", regards any historical reports to be less than certain, including historical reports of miracles, as all historical knowledge is always doubtful and open to approximation.


title: Miracle

text: James Keller states that "The claim that God has worked a miracle implies that God has singled out certain persons for some benefit which many others do not receive implies that God is unfair."


title: Miracle

text: According to a 2011 poll by the Pew Research Center, more than 90 percent of evangelical Christians believe miracles still take place. While Christians see God as sometimes intervening in human activities, Muslims see Allah as a direct cause of all events. "God’s overwhelming closeness makes it easy for Muslims to admit the miraculous in the world."


title: Miracle

text: The "Haedong Kosung-jon" of Korea (Biographies of High Monks) records that King Beopheung of Silla had desired to promulgate Buddhism as the state religion. However, officials in his court opposed him. In the fourteenth year of his reign, Beopheung's "Grand Secretary", Ichadon, devised a strategy to overcome court opposition. Ichadon schemed with the king, convincing him to make a proclamation granting Buddhism official state sanction using the royal seal. Ichadon told the king to deny having made such a proclamation when the opposing officials received it and demanded an explanation. Instead, Ichadon would confess and accept the punishment of execution, for what would quickly be seen as a forgery. Ichadon prophesied to the king that at his execution a wonderful miracle would convince the opposing court faction of Buddhism's power. Ichadon's scheme went as planned, and the opposing officials took the bait. When Ichadon was executed on the 15th day of the 9th month in 527, his prophecy was fulfilled; the earth shook, the sun was darkened, beautiful flowers rained from the sky, his severed head flew to the sacred Geumgang mountains, and milk instead of blood sprayed 100 feet in the air from his beheaded corpse. The omen was accepted by the opposing court officials as a manifestation of heaven's approval, and Buddhism was made the state religion in 527 CE.


title: Miracle

text: Miracles play an important role in the veneration of Buddhist relics in Southern Asia. Thus, Somawathie Stupa in Sri Lanka is an increasingly popular site of pilgrimage and tourist destination thanks to multiple reports about miraculous rays of light, apparitions and modern legends, which often have been fixed in photographs and movies.


title: Miracle

text: The gospels record three sorts of miracles performed by Jesus: exorcisms, cures, and nature wonders. In the Gospel of John, the miracles are referred to as "signs" and the emphasis is on God demonstrating his underlying normal activity in remarkable ways. In the New Testament, the greatest miracle is the resurrection of Jesus, the event central to Christian faith.


title: Miracle

text: Jesus explains in the New Testament that miracles are performed by faith in God. "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'move from here to there' and it will move." (Gospel of Matthew 17:20). After Jesus returned to heaven, the Book of Acts records the disciples of Jesus praying to God to grant that miracles be done in his name for the purpose of convincing onlookers that he is alive. (Acts 4:29–31).


title: Miracle

text: Other passages mention false prophets who will be able to perform miracles to deceive "if possible, even the elect of Christ" (Matthew 24:24). 2 Thessalonians 2:9 says, "And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the Truth, that they might be saved." Revelation 13:13,14 says, "And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live." Revelation 16:14 says, "For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Revelation 19:20 says, "And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." These passages indicate that signs, wonders, and miracles are not necessarily committed by God. These miracles not committed by God are labeled as false(pseudo) miracles though which could mean that they are deceptive in nature and are not the same as the true miracles committed by God.


title: Miracle

text: In early Christianity miracles were the most often attested motivations for conversions of pagans; pagan Romans took the existence of miracles for granted; Christian texts reporting them offered miracles as divine proof of the Christian God's unique claim to authority, relegating all other gods to the lower status of "daimones": "of all worships, the Christian best and most particularly advertised its miracles by driving out of spirits and laying on of hands". The Gospel of John is structured around miraculous "signs": The success of the Apostles according to the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea lay in their miracles: "though laymen in their language", he asserted, "they drew courage from divine, miraculous powers". The conversion of Constantine by a miraculous sign in heaven is a prominent fourth-century example.


title: Miracle

text: Since the Age of Enlightenment, miracles have often needed to be rationalized: C.S. Lewis, Norman Geisler, William Lane Craig, and other 20th-century Christians have argued that miracles are reasonable and plausible. For example, Lewis said that a miracle is something that comes totally out of the blue. If for thousands of years a woman can become pregnant only by sexual intercourse with a man, then if she were to become pregnant without a man, it would be a miracle.


title: Miracle

text: There have been numerous claims of miracles by people of most Christian denominations, including but not limited to faith healings and casting out demons. Miracle reports are especially prevalent in Roman Catholicism and Pentecostal or Charismatic churches.


title: Miracle

text: The Catholic Church believes miracles are works of God, either directly, or through the prayers and intercessions of a specific saint or saints. There is usually a specific purpose connected to a miracle, e.g. the conversion of a person or persons to the Catholic faith or the construction of a church desired by God. The Church says that it tries to be very cautious to approve the validity of putative miracles. The Catholic Church also says that it maintains particularly stringent requirements in validating the miracle's authenticity. The process is overseen by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.


title: Miracle

text: The Catholic Church has listed several events as miracles, some of them occurring in modern times. Before a person can be accepted as a saint, they must be posthumously confirmed to have performed two miracles. In the procedure of beatification of Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005, the Vatican announced on 14 January 2011 that Pope Benedict XVI had confirmed that the recovery of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre from Parkinson's disease was a miracle.


title: Miracle

text: Among the more notable miracles approved by the Church are several Eucharistic miracles wherein the sacramental bread and wine are transformed into Christ's flesh and blood, such as the Miracle of Lanciano and cures in Lourdes.


title: Miracle

text: According to 17th century documents, a young Spanish man's leg was miraculously restored to him in 1640 after having been amputated two and a half years earlier.


title: Miracle

text: Another miracle approved by the Church is the Miracle of the Sun, which is said to have occurred near Fátima, Portugal on October 13, 1917. According to legend, between 70,000 and 100,000 people, who were gathered at a cove near Fátima, witnessed the sunlight dim and change colors, and the Sun spin, dance about in the sky, and appear to plummet to earth, radiating great heat in the process. After the ten-minute event, the ground and the people's clothing, which had been drenched by a previous rainstorm, were both dry.


title: Miracle

text: Velankanni (Mary) can be traced to the mid-16th century and is attributed to three miracles: the apparition of Mary and the Christ Child to a slumbering shepherd boy, the curing of a lame buttermilk vendor, and the rescue of Portuguese sailors from a violent sea storm.


title: Miracle

text: In addition to these, the Catholic Church attributes miraculous causes to many otherwise inexplicable phenomena on a case-by-case basis. Only after all other possible explanations have been asserted to be inadequate will the Church assume "divine intervention" and declare the miracle worthy of veneration by their followers. The Church does not, however, enjoin belief in any extra-Scriptural miracle as an article of faith or as necessary for salvation.


title: Miracle

text: St. Thomas Aquinas, a prominent Doctor of the Church, divided miracles into three types in his "Summa contra Gentiles":Things that are at times divinely accomplished, apart from the generally established order in things, are customarily called miracles; for we admire with some astonishment a certain event when we observe the effect but do not know its cause. And since one and the same cause is at times known to some people and unknown to others, the result is that of several who see an effect at the same time, some are moved to admiring astonishment, while others are not. For instance, the astronomer is not astonished when he sees an eclipse of the sun, for he knows its cause, but the person who is ignorant of this science must be amazed, for he ignores the cause. And so, a certain event is wondrous to one person, but not so to another. So, a thing that has a completely hidden cause is wondrous in an unqualified way, and this the name, miracle, suggests; namely, what is of itself filled with admirable wonder, not simply in relation to one person or another. Now, absolutely speaking, the cause hidden from every man is God. In fact, we proved above that no man in the present state of life can grasp His essence intellectually. Therefore, those things must properly be called miraculous which are done by divine power apart from the order generally followed in things.


title: Miracle

text: Now, there are various degrees and orders of these miracles. Indeed, the highest rank among miracles is held by those events in which something is done by God which nature never could do. For example, that two bodies should be coincident; that the sun reverse its course, or stand still; that the sea open up and offer a way through which people may pass. And even among these an order may be observed. For the greater the things that God does are, and the more they are removed from the capacity of nature, the greater the miracle is. Thus, it is more miraculous for the sun to reverse its course than for the sea to be divided.


title: Miracle

text: Then, the second degree among miracles is held by those events in which God does something which nature can do, but not in this order. It is a work of nature for an animal to live, to see, and to walk; but for it to live after death, to see after becoming blind, to walk after paralysis of the limbs, this nature cannot do—but God at times does such works miraculously. Even among this degree of miracles a gradation is evident, according as what is done is more removed from the capacity of nature.


title: Miracle

text: Now, the third degree of miracles occurs when God does what is usually done by the working of nature, but without the operation of the principles of nature. For example, a person may be cured by divine power from a fever which could be cured naturally, and it may rain independently of the working of the principles of nature.


title: Miracle

text: For a majority of Evangelical Christians, biblicism ensures that the miracles described in the Bible are still relevant and may be present in the life of the believer. Healings, academic or professional successes, the birth of a child after several attempts, the end of an addiction, etc., would be tangible examples of God's intervention with the faith and prayer, by the Holy Spirit. In the 1980s, the neo-charismatic movement re-emphasized miracles and faith healing. In certain churches, a special place is thus reserved for faith healings with laying on of hands during worship services or for campaigns evangelization. Faith healing or divine healing is considered to be an inheritance of Jesus acquired by his death and resurrection.


title: Miracle

text: In Hinduism, miracles are focused on episodes of liberation of the spirit. A key example is the revelation of Krishna to Arjuna, wherein Krishna persuades Arjuna to rejoin the battle against his cousins by briefly and miraculously giving Arjuna the power to see the true scope of the Universe, and its sustainment within Krishna, which requires divine vision. This is a typical situation in Hindu mythology wherein "wondrous acts are performed for the purpose of bringing spiritual liberation to those who witness or read about them."


title: Miracle

text: Hindu sages have criticized both expectation and reliance on miracles as cheats, situations where people have sought to earn a benefit without doing the work necessary to merit it. Miracles continue to be occasionally reported in the practice of Hinduism, with an example of a miracle modernly reported in Hinduism being the Hindu milk miracle of September 1995, with additional occurrences in 2006 and 2010, wherein statues of certain Hindu deities were seen to drink milk offered to them. The scientific explanation for the incident, attested by Indian academics, was that the material was wicked from the offering bowls by capillary action.


title: Miracle

text: In the Quran, a miracle can be defined as a supernatural intervention in the life of human beings. According to this definition, miracles are present "in a threefold sense: in sacred history, in connection with Muhammad himself and in relation to revelation". The Quran does not use the technical Arabic word for miracle ("Muʿd̲j̲iza") literally meaning "that by means of which [the Prophet] confounds, overwhelms, his opponents". It rather uses the term 'Ayah' (literally meaning sign). The term "Ayah" is used in the Quran in the above-mentioned threefold sense: it refers to the "verses" of the Quran (believed to be the divine speech in human language; presented by Muhammad as his chief miracle); as well as to miracles of it and the signs (particularly those of creation).


title: Miracle

text: To defend the possibility of miracles and God's omnipotence against the encroachment of the independent secondary causes, some medieval Muslim theologians such as Al-Ghazali rejected the idea of cause and effect in essence, but accepted it as something that facilitates humankind's investigation and comprehension of natural processes. They argued that the nature was composed of uniform atoms that were "re-created" at every instant by God. Thus, if the soil was to fall, God would have to create and re-create the accident of heaviness for as long as the soil was to fall. For Muslim theologians, the laws of nature were only the customary sequence of apparent causes: customs of God.


title: Miracle

text: Sufi biographical literature records claims of miraculous accounts of men and women. The miraculous prowess of the Sufi holy men includes "firasa" (clairvoyance), the ability to disappear from sight, to become completely invisible and practice "buruz" (exteriorization). The holy men reportedly tame wild beasts and traverse long distances in a very short time span. They could also produce food and rain in seasons of drought, heal the sick and help barren women conceive.


title: Miracle

text: Descriptions of miracles (Hebrew "Ness, נס") appear in the Tanakh. Examples include prophets, such as Elijah who performed miracles like the raising of a widow's dead son (1 Kings 17:17–24) and Elisha whose miracles include multiplying the poor widow's jar of oil (2 Kings 4:1–7) and restoring to life the son of the woman of Shunem (2 Kings 4:18–37). The Torah describes many miracles related to Moses during his time as a prophet and the Exodus of the Israelites. Parting the Red Sea, and facilitating the Plagues of Egypt are among the most famous.


title: Miracle

text: During the first century BCE, a variety of religious movements and splinter groups developed amongst the Jews in Judea. A number of individuals claimed to be miracle workers in the tradition of Moses, Elijah, and Elisha, the Jewish prophets. The Talmud provides some examples of such Jewish miracle workers, one of whom is Honi HaM'agel, who was famous for his ability to successfully pray for rain.


title: Miracle

text: Most Chasidic communities are rife with tales of miracles that follow a "yechidut", a spiritual audience with a "tzadik": barren women become pregnant, cancer tumors shrink, wayward children become pious. Many Hasidim claim that miracles can take place in merit of partaking of the "shirayim" (the leftovers from the rebbe's meal), such as miraculous healing or blessings of wealth or piety.


title: Miracle

text: Thomas Paine, one of the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution, wrote "All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe."


title: Miracle

text: Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, edited a version of the Bible in which he removed sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects as well as perceived misinterpretations he believed had been added by the Four Evangelists. Jefferson wrote, "The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems, [footnote: e.g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc. —T.J.] invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning."


title: Miracle

text: American Revolutionary War patriot Ethan Allen wrote, "In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue."


title: Miracle

text: Robert Ingersoll wrote, "Not 20 people were convinced by the reported miracles of Christ, and yet people of the nineteenth century were coolly asked to be convinced on hearsay by miracles which those who are supposed to have seen them refused to credit."


title: Miracle

text: Elbert Hubbard, American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher, wrote "A miracle is an event described by those to whom it was told by people who did not see it."


title: Miracle

text: Mathematician Charles Hermite, in a discourse upon the world of mathematical truths and the physical world, stated that "The synthesis of the two is revealed partially in the marvellous correspondence between abstract mathematics on the one hand and all the branches of physics on the other".


title: Miracle

text: Baden Powell, an English mathematician and Church of England priest, stated that if God is a lawgiver, then a "miracle" would break the lawful edicts that had been issued at Creation. Therefore, a belief in miracles would be entirely atheistic.


title: Prison rape

text: Prison rape or jail rape refers to sexual assault of people while they are incarcerated. The phrase is commonly used to describe rape of inmates by other inmates, or to describe rape of inmates by staff.


title: Prison rape

text: In February 2021, BBC News reported eyewitness accounts of systematic rape of Uyghur women in the Xinjiang internment camps.


title: Prison rape

text: Multiple women who were formerly detained in the Xinjiang internment camps have publicly made accusations of systemic sexual abuse, including rape. Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher who was forced to work in the camps, told the BBC that employees of the camp in which she was detained conducted rapes "en masse", saying that camp guards "picked the girls and young women they wanted and took them away". She also told the BBC of an organized gang rape, in which a woman around age 21 was forced to make a confession in front of a crowd of 100 other women detained in the camps, before being raped by multiple policemen in front of the assembled crowd. Tursunay Ziawudun, a woman who was detained in the camps for a period of nine months, told the BBC that women were removed from their cells "every night" to be raped by Chinese men, and that she was subjected to three separate instances of gang rape while detained. Qelbinur Sedik, an Uzbek woman from Xinjiang, has stated that Chinese police sexually abused detainees during electric shock tortures, saying that "there were four kinds of electric shock... the chair, the glove, the helmet, and anal rape with a stick".


title: Prison rape

text: Sexual violence against political prisoners is prevalent in Iran. It is allegedly ignored or even facilitated by authorities.


title: Prison rape

text: Reports issued to the United Nations allege that rape has been used by interrogators in Iran for decades. During the 1980s, following the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the rape of female political prisoners was so prevalent that it prompted Hussein-Ali Montazeri, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini's then-deputy, to write the following to Khomeini in a letter dated 7 October 1986: "Did you know that young women are raped in some of the prisons of the Islamic Republic?" Two prominent members of Iran's human rights community, the feminist lawyer and journalist Shadi Sadr and the blogger and activist Mojtaba Saminejad published essays online from inside Iran saying prison rape has a long history in the Islamic Republic.


title: Prison rape

text: In the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, opposition groups reported thousands were arrested and tortured in prisons around the country, with former inmates alleging mass rape of men, women and children by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, in prisons such as Kahrizak and Evin.


title: Prison rape

text: Following the 2009 presidential election, Iranian presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi said several protesters held behind bars in Evin Prison had been savagely raped, according to a confidential letter to former president and cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Karroubi said this was a "fragment" of the evidence he had and that if the denials did not stop, he would release even more.


title: Prison rape

text: On 9 August 2009, in a letter to the Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran, Mehdi Karroubi demanded investigation of Iranian prisons for possible torture and, in particular, sexual harassment of men and women. On 19 August, he wrote to parliament speaker Ali Larijani, asking to meet with him, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the state prosecutor to "personally present my documents and evidence over the cases of sexual abuse in some prisons specially Kahrizak." Ali Larijani and Sadeq Larijani (Judiciary committee) both officially rejected his claims and Ali Khamenei's representatives, and Vice Chairman of National Security Commission of the parliament demanded Karroubi's arrest.


title: Prison rape

text: Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both released reports of widespread rape and abuse of prisoners in Turkey spanning multiple decades. Kurdish prisoners have also been specifically targeted for rape and other forms of sexual violence.


title: Prison rape

text: Rape is regularly used in prisons across the wider Middle East. Sexual abuse of detained women, children and men is rampant in UAE, Saudi and Bahraini prisons.


title: Prison rape

text: In the United States, the overwhelming majority of prison rape cases involve men who are raped by other men. This is due in part to the fact that in the United States the vast majority of incarcerated people are men. Sexual contact with inmates by prison staff is illegal, regardless of supposed consent.


title: Prison rape

text: Public awareness of common prison rape is a relatively recent development, and estimates of its prevalence have varied widely over the past several decades. In 1974, Carl Weiss and David James Friar wrote that 46 million Americans would one day be incarcerated; of that number, they held that 10 million would be raped.


title: Prison rape

text: According to a US Department of Justice report from 2013, an estimated 5.0% of people incarcerated in state and federal prison, and 3.2% of those in jail, reported at least one incident of sexual victimization in the prior 12 months. However, advocates dispute the accuracy of the numbers due to under-reporting of sexual assaults in prison, especially among incarcerated youths.


title: Prison rape

text: In terms of individuals' risk over their entire incarceration, estimates from the 1980s and 1990s range widely. A 1992 estimate from the Federal Bureau of Prisons suggested that between 9% and 20% of inmates had been sexually assaulted. Similarly, studies from 1982 and 1996, concluded that the rate was somewhere between 12% and 14%. In New York State maximum security prisons, a 1986 study put the proportion at around 23%. By contrast, Christine Saum's 1994 survey of 101 inmates determined that 5 had been sexually assaulted.


title: Prison rape

text: The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 was the first United States federal law passed specifically dealing with the sexual assault of prisoners. The bill was signed into law on 4 September 2003.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: A spelling alphabet (also called by various other names) is a set of words used to represent the letters of an alphabet in oral communication, especially over a two-way radio or telephone. The words chosen to represent the letters sound sufficiently different from each other to clearly differentiate them. This avoids any confusion that could easily otherwise result from the names of letters that sound similar, except for some small difference easily missed or easily degraded by the imperfect sound quality of the apparatus. For example, in the Latin alphabet, the letters B, P, and D ("bee", "pee" and "dee") sound similar and could easily be confused, but the words "bravo", "papa" and "delta" sound completely different, making confusion unlikely.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Any suitable words can be used in the moment, making this form of communication easy even for people not trained on any particular standardized spelling alphabet. For example, it is common to hear a nonce form like "A as in 'apple', D as in 'dog', P as in 'paper'" over the telephone in customer support contexts. However, to gain the advantages of standardization in contexts involving trained persons, a standard version can be convened by an organization. Many (loosely or strictly) standardized spelling alphabets exist, mostly owing to historical siloization, where each organization simply created its own. International air travel created a need for a worldwide standard.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Today the most widely known spelling alphabet is the ICAO International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet, also known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, which is used for Roman letters. Spelling alphabets also exist for Greek and for Russian.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Spelling alphabets are called by various names, according to context. These synonyms include spelling alphabet, word-spelling alphabet, voice procedure alphabet, radio alphabet, radiotelephony alphabet, telephone alphabet, and telephony alphabet. A spelling alphabet is also often called a phonetic alphabet, especially by amateur radio enthusiasts, recreational sailors in the US and Australia, and NATO military organizations, despite this usage of the term producing a naming collision with the usage of the same phrase in phonetics to mean a notation used for phonetic transcription or phonetic spelling, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is used to indicate the sounds of human speech.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: The names of the letters of the English alphabet are "a", "bee", "cee", "dee", "e", etc. These can be difficult to discriminate, particularly over a limited-bandwidth and noisy communications channel, hence the use in aviation and by armed services of unambiguous substitute names for use in electrical voice communication such as telephone and radio.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: A large number of spelling alphabets have been developed over the past century, with the first ones being used to overcome problems with the early wired telephone networks, and the later ones being focused on wireless two-way radio (radiotelephony) links. Often, each communications company and each branch of each country's military developed its own spelling alphabet, with the result that one 1959 research effort documented a full 203 different spelling alphabets, comprising 1600 different words, leading the author of the report to ask:


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Each word in the spelling alphabet typically replaces the name of the letter with which it starts (acrophony). It is used to spell out words when speaking to someone not able to see the speaker, or when the audio channel is not clear. The lack of high frequencies on standard telephones makes it hard to distinguish an 'F' from an 'S' for example. Also, the lack of visual cues during oral communication can cause confusion. For example, lips are closed at the start of saying the letter "B" but open at the beginning of the letter "D" making these otherwise similar-sounding letters more easily discriminated when looking at the speaker. Without these visual cues, such as during announcements of airline gate numbers "B1" and "D1" at an airport, "B" may be confused with "D" by the listener. Spelling out one's name, a password or a ticker symbol over the telephone are other scenarios where a spelling alphabet is useful.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: British Army signallers began using a partial spelling alphabet in the late 19th century. Recorded in the 1898 "Signalling Instruction" issued by the War Office and followed by the 1904 Signalling Regulations this system differentiated only the letters most frequently misunderstood: Ack (originally "Ak") Beer (or Bar) C D E F G H I J K L eMma N O Pip Q R eSses Toc U Vic W X Y Z. This alphabet was the origin of phrases such as "ack-ack" (A.A. for anti-aircraft), "pip-emma" for pm and Toc H for an ex-servicemen's association. It was developed on the Western Front of the First World War. The RAF developed their "telephony spelling alphabet", which was adopted by all three services and civil aviation in the UK from 1921.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: It was later formally codified to provide a word for all 26 letters (see comparative tabulation of Western military alphabets).


title: Spelling alphabet

text: For civilian users, in particular in the field of finance, alternative alphabets arose. Common personal names were a popular choice, and the First Name Alphabet came into common use.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Spelling alphabets are especially useful when speaking in a noisy environment when clarity and promptness of communication is essential, for example during two-way radio communication between an aircraft pilot and air traffic control, or in military operations. Whereas the names of many letters sound alike, the set of replacement words can be selected to be as distinct from each other as possible, to minimise the likelihood of ambiguity or mistaking one letter for another. For example, if a burst of static cuts off the start of an English-language utterance of the letter "J", it may be mistaken for "A" or "K". In the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet known as the ICAO (or NATO) phonetic alphabet, the sequence "J–A–K" would be pronounced "Juliett–Alfa–Kilo". Some voice procedure standards require numbers to be spelled out digit by digit, so some spelling alphabets replace confusable digit names with more distinct alternatives; for example, the NATO alphabet has “niner” for 9 to distinguish it better from 5 (pronounced as “fife”) and the German word “nein”.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Although no radio or traditional telephone communications are involved in communicating flag signals among ships, the instructions for which flags to hoist are relayed by voice on each ship displaying flags, and whether this is done by shouting between decks, sound tubes, or sound-powered telephones, some of the same distortions that make a spelling alphabet for radiotelephony also make a spelling alphabet desirable for directing seamen in which flags to hoist. The first documented use of this were two different alphabets used by U.S. Navy circa 1908. By 1942, the U.S. Army's radiotelephony spelling alphabet was associated with the International Code of Signals (ICS) flags.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: While spelling alphabets today are mostly used over two-way radio voice circuits (radiotelephony), early on in telecommunications there were also telephone-specific spelling alphabets, which were developed to deal with the noisy conditions on long-distance circuits. Their development was loosely intertwined with radiotelephony spelling alphabets, but were developed by different organizations; for example, AT&T developed a spelling alphabet for its long-distance operators, another for its international operators; Western Union developed one for the public to use when dictating telegrams over the telephone; and ITU-T developed a spelling alphabet for telephone networks, while ITU-R was involved in the development of radiotelephony spelling alphabets. Even though both of these groups were part of the same ITU, and thus part of the UN, their alphabets often differed from each other.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: In World War I battle lines were relatively static and forces were commonly linked by wired telephones. Signals could be weak on long wire runs and field telephone systems often used a single wire with earth return, which made them subject to inadvertent and deliberate interference. Spelling alphabets were introduced for wire telephony as well as on the newer radio voice equipment.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: The later NATO phonetic alphabet evolved from the procedures of several different Allied nations during World War II, including:


title: Spelling alphabet

text: For the 1938 and 1947 alphabets, each transmission of figures is preceded and followed by the words "as a number" spoken twice.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: The ITU adopted the International Maritime Organization's phonetic spelling alphabet in 1959, and in 1969 specified that it be "for application in the maritime mobile service only".


title: Spelling alphabet

text: During the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were two international aviation radio spelling alphabets, the "Able Baker" was used by most Western countries, while the "Ana Brazil" alphabet was used by South American and Caribbean regions.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Pronunciation was not defined prior to 1959. From 1959 to present, the underlined syllable of each code word for the letters should be stressed, and from 1969 to present, each syllable of the code words for the digits should be equally stressed, with the exceptions of the unstressed second syllables of fower, seven, niner, hundred.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: After WWII, the major work in producing a better spelling alphabet was conducted by the ICAO, which was subsequently adopted in modified form by the ITU and IMO. Its development is related to these various international conventions on radio, including:


title: Spelling alphabet

text: The ICAO Radiotelephony Alphabet is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization for international aircraft communications.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: The APCO first suggested that its Procedure and Signals Committee work out a system for a "standard set of words representing the alphabet should be used by all stations" in its April 1940 newsletter.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Note: The old APCO alphabet has wide usage among Public Safety agencies nationwide, even though APCO itself deprecated the alphabet in 1974, replacing it with the ICAO spelling alphabet. See https://www.apcointl.org and APCO radiotelephony spelling alphabet.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: The FCC regulations for Amateur radio state that "Use of a phonetic alphabet as an aid for correct station identification is encouraged" (47 C.F.R. § 97.119(b)(2)), but does not state which set of words should be used. Officially the same as used by ICAO, but there are significant variations commonly used by stations participating in HF contests and DX (especially in international HF communications).


title: Spelling alphabet

text: The official ARRL alphabet changed over the years, sometimes to reflect the current norms, and sometimes by the force of law. In rules made effective beginning April 1, 1946, the FCC forbade using the names of cities, states, or countries in spelling alphabets.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Certain languages' standard alphabets have letters, or letters with diacritics (e.g., umlauts, rings, tildes), that do not exist in the English alphabet. If these letters have two-letter ASCII substitutes, the ICAO/ITU code words for the two letters are used.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: In Danish and Norwegian the letters "æ", "ø" and "å" have their own code words. In Danish "Ægir", "Ødis" and "Åse" represent the three letters, while in Norwegian the three code words are "Ægir", "Ørnulf" and "Ågot" for civilians and "Ærlig", "Østen" and "Åse" for military personnel.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Estonian has four special letters, "õ", "ä", "ö" and "ü". "Õnne" represents "õ", "Ärni" for "ä", "Ööbik" for "ö" and "Ülle" for "ü".


title: Spelling alphabet

text: In Finnish there are special code words for the letters "å", "ä" and "ö". "Åke" is used to represent "å", "Äiti" is used for "ä" and "Öljy" for "ö". These code words are used only in national operations, the last remnants of the Finnish radio alphabet.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: In German, "Alfa-Echo" (ae) may be used for "ä", "Oscar-Echo" (oe) for "ö", "Sierra-Sierra" (ss) for "ß", and "Uniform-Echo" (ue) for "ü".


title: Spelling alphabet

text: The Greek spelling alphabet is a spelling alphabet for the Greek language, i.e. a set of names used in lieu of alphabet letters for the purpose of spelling out words. It is used by the Greek armed and emergency services.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Malay (including Indonesian) represents the letter "L" with "London", since the word "lima" means "five" in this language.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: The Russian spelling alphabet is a spelling alphabet for the Russian version of the Cyrillic alphabet.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: "Åke" is used for "å" "Ärlig" for "ä" and "Östen" for "ö" in the Swedish spelling alphabet, though the two-letter substitutes "aa", "ae" and "oe" respectively may be used in absence of the specific letters.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: The PGP word list, the Bubble Babble wordlist used by ssh-keygen, and the S/KEY dictionary, are spelling alphabets for public key fingerprints (or other binary data) – a set of names given to data bytes for the purpose of spelling out binary data in a clear and unambiguous way via a voice channel.


title: Spelling alphabet

text: Many unofficial spelling alphabets are in use that are not based on a standard, but are based on words the transmitter can remember easily, including first names, states, or cities. The LAPD phonetic alphabet has many first names. The German spelling alphabet ("Deutsches Funkalphabet" (literally "German Radio Alphabet")) also uses first names. Also, during the Vietnam war, soldiers used 'Cain' instead of 'Charlie' because 'Charlie' meant Viet Cong (Charlie being short for Victor Charlie, the International alphabet spelling of the initials VC).


title: Calibration

text: In measurement technology and metrology, calibration is the comparison of measurement values delivered by a device under test with those of a calibration standard of known accuracy. Such a standard could be another measurement device of known accuracy, a device generating the quantity to be measured such as a voltage, a sound tone, or a physical artifact, such as a meter ruler.


title: Calibration

text: Strictly speaking, the term "calibration" means just the act of comparison and does not include any subsequent adjustment.


title: Calibration

text: The calibration standard is normally traceable to a national or international standard held by a metrology body.


title: Calibration

text: The formal definition of calibration by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) is the following: "Operation that, under specified conditions, in a first step, establishes a relation between the quantity values with measurement uncertainties provided by measurement standards and corresponding indications with associated measurement uncertainties (of the calibrated instrument or secondary standard) and, in a second step, uses this information to establish a relation for obtaining a measurement result from an indication."


title: Calibration

text: This definition states that the calibration process is purely a comparison, but introduces the concept of measurement uncertainty in relating the accuracies of the device under test and the standard.


title: Calibration

text: The increasing need for known accuracy and uncertainty and the need to have consistent and comparable standards internationally has led to the establishment of national laboratories. In many countries a National Metrology Institute (NMI) will exist which will maintain primary standards of measurement (the main SI units plus a number of derived units) which will be used to provide traceability to customer's instruments by calibration.


title: Calibration

text: The NMI supports the metrological infrastructure in that country (and often others) by establishing an unbroken chain, from the top level of standards to an instrument used for measurement. Examples of National Metrology Institutes are NPL in the UK, NIST in the United States, PTB in Germany and many others. Since the Mutual Recognition Agreement was signed it is now straightforward to take traceability from any participating NMI and it is no longer necessary for a company to obtain traceability for measurements from the NMI of the country in which it is situated, such as the National Physical Laboratory in the UK.


title: Calibration

text: To improve the quality of the calibration and have the results accepted by outside organizations it is desirable for the calibration and subsequent measurements to be "traceable" to the internationally defined measurement units. Establishing traceability is accomplished by a formal comparison to a standard which is directly or indirectly related to national standards (such as NIST in the USA), international standards, or certified reference materials. This may be done by national standards laboratories operated by the government or by private firms offering metrology services.


title: Calibration

text: Quality management systems call for an effective metrology system which includes formal, periodic, and documented calibration of all measuring instruments. ISO 9000 and ISO 17025 standards require that these traceable actions are to a high level and set out how they can be quantified.


title: Calibration

text: To communicate the quality of a calibration the calibration value is often accompanied by a traceable uncertainty statement to a stated confidence level. This is evaluated through careful uncertainty analysis.


title: Calibration

text: Some times a DFS (Departure From Spec) is required to operate machinery in a degraded state. Whenever this does happen, it must be in writing and authorized by a manager with the technical assistance of a calibration technician.


title: Calibration

text: Measuring devices and instruments are categorized according to the physical quantities they are designed to measure. These vary internationally, e.g., NIST 150-2G in the U.S. and NABL-141 in India. Together, these standards cover instruments that measure various physical quantities such as electromagnetic radiation (RF probes), sound (sound level meter or noise dosimeter), time and frequency (intervalometer), ionizing radiation (Geiger counter), light (light meter), mechanical quantities (limit switch, pressure gauge, pressure switch), and, thermodynamic or thermal properties (thermometer, temperature controller). The standard instrument for each test device varies accordingly, e.g., a dead weight tester for pressure gauge calibration and a dry block temperature tester for temperature gauge calibration.


title: Calibration

text: In general use, calibration is often regarded as including the process of adjusting the output or indication on a measurement instrument to agree with value of the applied standard, within a specified accuracy. For example, a thermometer could be calibrated so the error of indication or the correction is determined, and adjusted (e.g. via calibration constants) so that it shows the true temperature in Celsius at specific points on the scale. This is the perception of the instrument's end-user. However, very few instruments can be adjusted to exactly match the standards they are compared to. For the vast majority of calibrations, the calibration process is actually the comparison of an unknown to a known and recording the results.


title: Calibration

text: The calibration process begins with the design of the measuring instrument that needs to be calibrated. The design has to be able to "hold a calibration" through its calibration interval. In other words, the design has to be capable of measurements that are "within engineering tolerance" when used within the stated environmental conditions over some reasonable period of time. Having a design with these characteristics increases the likelihood of the actual measuring instruments performing as expected.


title: Calibration

text: Basically, the purpose of calibration is for maintaining the quality of measurement as well as to ensure the proper working of particular instrument.


title: Calibration

text: The exact mechanism for assigning tolerance values varies by country and as per the industry type. The measuring of equipment is manufacturer generally assigns the measurement tolerance, suggests a calibration interval (CI) and specifies the environmental range of use and storage. The using organization generally assigns the actual calibration interval, which is dependent on this specific measuring equipment's likely usage level. The assignment of calibration intervals can be a formal process based on the results of previous calibrations. The standards themselves are not clear on recommended CI values:


title: Calibration

text: The next step is defining the calibration process. The selection of a standard or standards is the most visible part of the calibration process. Ideally, the standard has less than 1/4 of the measurement uncertainty of the device being calibrated. When this goal is met, the accumulated measurement uncertainty of all of the standards involved is considered to be insignificant when the final measurement is also made with the 4:1 ratio. This ratio was probably first formalized in Handbook 52 that accompanied MIL-STD-45662A, an early US Department of Defense metrology program specification. It was 10:1 from its inception in the 1950s until the 1970s, when advancing technology made 10:1 impossible for most electronic measurements.


title: Calibration

text: Maintaining a 4:1 accuracy ratio with modern equipment is difficult. The test equipment being calibrated can be just as accurate as the working standard. If the accuracy ratio is less than 4:1, then the calibration tolerance can be reduced to compensate. When 1:1 is reached, only an exact match between the standard and the device being calibrated is a completely correct calibration. Another common method for dealing with this capability mismatch is to reduce the accuracy of the device being calibrated.


title: Calibration

text: For example, a gauge with 3% manufacturer-stated accuracy can be changed to 4% so that a 1% accuracy standard can be used at 4:1. If the gauge is used in an application requiring 16% accuracy, having the gauge accuracy reduced to 4% will not affect the accuracy of the final measurements. This is called a limited calibration. But if the final measurement requires 10% accuracy, then the 3% gauge never can be better than 3.3:1. Then perhaps adjusting the calibration tolerance for the gauge would be a better solution. If the calibration is performed at 100 units, the 1% standard would actually be anywhere between 99 and 101 units. The acceptable values of calibrations where the test equipment is at the 4:1 ratio would be 96 to 104 units, inclusive. Changing the acceptable range to 97 to 103 units would remove the potential contribution of all of the standards and preserve a 3.3:1 ratio. Continuing, a further change to the acceptable range to 98 to 102 restores more than a 4:1 final ratio.


title: Calibration

text: This is a simplified example. The mathematics of the example can be challenged. It is important that whatever thinking guided this process in an actual calibration be recorded and accessible. Informality contributes to tolerance stacks and other difficult to diagnose post calibration problems.


title: Calibration

text: Also in the example above, ideally the calibration value of 100 units would be the best point in the gauge's range to perform a single-point calibration. It may be the manufacturer's recommendation or it may be the way similar devices are already being calibrated. Multiple point calibrations are also used. Depending on the device, a zero unit state, the absence of the phenomenon being measured, may also be a calibration point. Or zero may be resettable by the user-there are several variations possible. Again, the points to use during calibration should be recorded.


title: Calibration

text: There may be specific connection techniques between the standard and the device being calibrated that may influence the calibration. For example, in electronic calibrations involving analog phenomena, the impedance of the cable connections can directly influence the result.


title: Calibration

text: As an example, a manual process may be used for calibration of a pressure gauge. The procedure requires multiple steps, to connect the gauge under test to a reference master gauge and an adjustable pressure source, to apply fluid pressure to both reference and test gauges at definite points over the span of the gauge, and to compare the readings of the two. The gauge under test may be adjusted to ensure its zero point and response to pressure comply as closely as possible to the intended accuracy. Each step of the process requires manual record keeping.


title: Calibration

text: An automatic pressure calibrator is a device that combines an electronic control unit, a pressure intensifier used to compress a gas such as Nitrogen, a pressure transducer used to detect desired levels in a hydraulic accumulator, and accessories such as liquid traps and gauge fittings. An automatic system may also include data collection facilities to automate the gathering of data for record keeping.


title: Calibration

text: All of the information above is collected in a calibration procedure, which is a specific test method. These procedures capture all of the steps needed to perform a successful calibration. The manufacturer may provide one or the organization may prepare one that also captures all of the organization's other requirements. There are clearinghouses for calibration procedures such as the Government-Industry Data Exchange Program (GIDEP) in the United States.


title: Calibration

text: This exact process is repeated for each of the standards used until transfer standards, certified reference materials and/or natural physical constants, the measurement standards with the least uncertainty in the laboratory, are reached. This establishes the traceability of the calibration.


title: Calibration

text: After all of this, individual instruments of the specific type discussed above can finally be calibrated. The process generally begins with a basic damage check. Some organizations such as nuclear power plants collect "as-found" calibration data before any routine maintenance is performed. After routine maintenance and deficiencies detected during calibration are addressed, an "as-left" calibration is performed.


title: Calibration

text: More commonly, a calibration technician is entrusted with the entire process and signs the calibration certificate, which documents the completion of a successful calibration.


title: Calibration

text: The basic process outlined above is a difficult and expensive challenge. The cost for ordinary equipment support is generally about 10% of the original purchase price on a yearly basis, as a commonly accepted rule-of-thumb. Exotic devices such as scanning electron microscopes, gas chromatograph systems and laser interferometer devices can be even more costly to maintain.


title: Calibration

text: The 'single measurement' device used in the basic calibration process description above does exist. But, depending on the organization, the majority of the devices that need calibration can have several ranges and many functionalities in a single instrument. A good example is a common modern oscilloscope. There easily could be 200,000 combinations of settings to completely calibrate and limitations on how much of an all-inclusive calibration can be automated.


title: Calibration

text: To prevent unauthorized access to an instrument tamper-proof seals are usually applied after calibration. The picture of the oscilloscope rack shows these, and prove that the instrument has not been removed since it was last calibrated as they will possible unauthorized to the adjusting elements of the instrument. There also are labels showing the date of the last calibration and when the calibration interval dictates when the next one is needed. Some organizations also assign unique identification to each instrument to standardize the record keeping and keep track of accessories that are integral to a specific calibration condition.


title: Calibration

text: When the instruments being calibrated are integrated with computers, the integrated computer programs and any calibration corrections are also under control.


title: Calibration

text: The words "calibrate" and "calibration" entered the English language as recently as the American Civil War, in descriptions of artillery, thought to be derived from a measurement of the calibre of a gun.


title: Calibration

text: Some of the earliest known systems of measurement and calibration seem to have been created between the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, with excavations revealing the use of angular gradations for construction. The term "calibration" was likely first associated with the precise division of linear distance and angles using a dividing engine and the measurement of gravitational mass using a weighing scale. These two forms of measurement alone and their direct derivatives supported nearly all commerce and technology development from the earliest civilizations until about AD 1800.


title: Calibration

text: Early measurement devices were "direct", i.e. they had the same units as the quantity being measured. Examples include length using a yardstick and mass using a weighing scale. At the beginning of the twelfth century, during the reign of Henry I (1100-1135), it was decreed that a yard be "the distance from the tip of the King's nose to the end of his outstretched thumb." However, it wasn't until the reign of Richard I (1197) that we find documented evidence.


title: Calibration

text: Other standardization attempts followed, such as the Magna Carta (1225) for liquid measures, until the Mètre des Archives from France and the establishment of the Metric system.


title: Calibration

text: One of the earliest pressure measurement devices was the Mercury barometer, credited to Torricelli (1643), which read atmospheric pressure using Mercury. Soon after, water-filled manometers were designed. All these would have linear calibrations using gravimetric principles, where the difference in levels was proportional to pressure. The normal units of measure would be the convenient inches of mercury or water.


title: Calibration

text: In the direct reading hydrostatic manometer design on the right, applied pressure P pushes the liquid down the right side of the manometer U-tube, while a length scale next to the tube measures the difference of levels. The resulting height difference "H" is a direct measurement of the pressure or vacuum with respect to atmospheric pressure. In the absence of differential pressure both levels would be equal, and this would be used as the zero point.


title: Calibration

text: The Industrial Revolution saw the adoption of "indirect" pressure measuring devices, which were more practical than the manometer.