Faculty of Automatic Control, Electronics and Computer Science

Youthful years in Jarosław, studies, and the beginnings of scientific activity in Gliwice

Zdzisław Trybalski was born on 13th July 1922 in Jarosław in a civil servant family. In June 1939, he graduated from the Witkowski Mathematics and Physics High School in Jarosław. The outbreak of the war made him start working in the City Power Plant as a fitter. After two years of work, in September 1941, he enrolled in the State School of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering in Cracow and graduated as a technician in 1943. In the same year, he moved to Lviv, where he began studying at the local Polytechnic, which operated under the name of Staatliche Technische Fachkurse under the war occupation. Parallel to the official study program, he pursued secret studies under the supervision of the Rector Prof. Włodzimierz Burzyński and the Dean Prof. Kazimierz Idaszewski (later the first Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Silesian University of Technology) according to the program of the pre-war Lviv University of Technology (Lviv Polytechnic). In March 1945, he left Lviv and moved to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Silesian University of Technology, which was being organized in its temporary premises at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow. In October 1945, he appeared in Silesia when the Silesian University of Technology obtained its permanent location in Gliwice.

As a student in Gliwice, Zdzisław Trybalski lived in pioneer post-war conditions and studied at the newly organized Faculty of Electrical Engineering. The Silesian University of Technology was established in the city where there had never been a university before, and its task was to meet the needs of Upper Silesia (the most industrialized part of the country) for engineering personnel and to create a scientific base for the Silesian industry.

The emerging Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Silesian University of Technology initially had a profile modeled based on the Lviv Polytechnic, from which most of the academic staff originated. It was a traditional high-current profile, although, from the very beginning of its existence, there was a Department of Radiotechnology, headed by Prof. Tadeusz Malarski from 1st November 1945 (and later by Dr. Tadeusz Zagajewski). The area of electrotechnology then known as low current electrotechnology, i.e., today's electronics, was not expected to develop much. It was only the discussions initiated by several second-year students, including Stefan Węgrzyn and Zdzisław Trybalski, that led Professor Malarski to establish a Telecommunications Group, like the one he had directed before the war, at the Lviv Polytechnic.

The didactic laboratories of the Faculty were created by the joint efforts of the employees and student-enthusiasts. There was no equipment that could become the basis for the construction of laboratories, especially such complex laboratories as those related to teletechnics. The domestic industry had hardly produced it yet. The equipment was purchased from various private companies, commission stores, and random suppliers. In 1948, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering received a certain amount of equipment from UNRRA donations. The equipment included measuring devices and instruments, some of which came from the American Army's demobilization, and some from the stocks provided by the industry of Western countries.

The Telecommunication Group was supported by two departments: in addition to the initially existing Department of Radiotechnology, in 1947, a Department of Teletechnics was organized (headed by Ł. Dorosz, who commuted from Gdańsk). In addition, Józef Szpilecki of the Physics Department, Czesława Kornaga-Kolmerowa of the Radiotechnics Department, Karol Lubelski from the Department of Foundations of Electrical Engineering, and Jerzy Siwiński, then director of the Katowice Post and Telegraph District, were involved in the Group's didactic work. Apart from them, many students of the last years of studies, who were later to become scientific workers of the Faculty, started their academic careers as junior assistants. Zdzislaw Trybalski, already a third-year student, worked in the Department of Telecommunication Engineering since 1^st September 1946, conducting didactic classes (blackboard and laboratory exercises) with his younger colleagues in such courses as teletransmission and designing teletransmission links of DUPLEX type. For example, the teletransmission laboratory was organized in the Interurban Booster Station in Mysłowice which was the node of the international cable ring connecting Kyiv, Bratislava, Vienna, Prague, Leipzig, and Berlin.

Zdzisław Trybalski finished his studies in 1949, obtaining the diploma of M. Sc. in "his Department".  His thesis was entitled "Kable koaxialne i ich własności transmisyjne” (Coaxial cables and their transmission properties).