What was going on when I was born?

In 1893, an inventor named Joseph Duncan breezed into Chicago to find his fortune with an automatic addressing machine. He sold a dozen of them in a year's time and was heartened enough to form the Addressograph Company in 1896. Meanwhile, Henry Gammeter had concocted a machine that could duplicate a complete line or a complete page of characters at a single stroke. In December 1902, he formed the American Multigraph Company in Chicago. For several decades, the two companies went their separate ways, though their products often churned away side by side in many American offices. It was a logical marriage, then, when the two joined forces as the Addressograph-Multigraph Corporation in 1930.

A court order prohibiting all work on a Hudson River landfill needed for the Westway highway project was issued yesterday in Manhattan, carrying out a court decision concerning the project's effect on striped bass. The order prohibits ''all activities relating to Westway that affect the waters or bed of the Hudson River,'' including the demolition of some piers that was supposed to begin this month. Work on the planned 200-acre landfill itself was not scheduled to begin until later.

AM International Inc., the old Addressograph-Multigraph Corporation that has been struggling for months to overcome rising debts and continuing losses, announced today that it had filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act while it tried to reorganize. The Chicago-based company, one of the nation's oldest and bestknown suppliers of office equipment and information processing systems, attributed its action to its negative net worth and its $254 million in debt. ''As a result of AM's recent losses and write-downs, its deficient net worth and high debt levels, the company needed concessions from a broad base of lenders,'' said Joe B. Freeman Jr., who took over in late February as AM's chairman and chief executive officer. ''The complexity of our debt structure and the magnitude of interest concessions required were proving too great a barrier to overcome.''

In some copies yesterday, a sports article about a labor complaint filed by the National Football League Players Association incorrectly identified the Kansas City newspaper that had polled a number of players. It was The Kansas City Times.

President Reagan said today that he ''was neither ruling out nor ruling in'' an income tax surcharge being proposed in an effort to break the stalemate on the budget for the fiscal year 1983. White House officials also signaled Mr. Reagan's willingness to consider such a tax increase. But, despite this indication of flexibility from the White House at a news conference, the Senate majority leader, Howard H. Baker Jr., joined the bipartisan Congressional effort to spur Mr. Transcript of news session, page D20.

The Stroh Brewery Company of Michigan, the nation's No.7 beer maker, said yesterday that its $325 million offer to buy two-thirds of the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company of Wisconsin had attracted 68 percent of Schlitz's stock. The response normally would mean victory for Stroh, whose offer of $16 a share for at least 67 percent of the outstanding shares was opposed by Schlitz. But that may not be the case.

The Census Bureau, seeking to redefine who is poor, said today that counting the value of food stamps, Medicaid and other Government benefits would significantly reduce the number of people classified as poor by Federal standards. The three alternative measurements of poverty discussed in a Census Bureau report released today do not change the material well-being of lower-income Americans. But they are likely to affect judgments about how best to aid the poor, a subject that has been debated since President Johnson began his war on poverty in 1964. Measurement of Income A change in how poverty is measured could dramatically reduce the official poverty rate reported for specific groups, such as blacks and the elderly. Also, eligibility for many Federal welfare, housing, education and nutrition programs is tied to the poverty standard. If noncash benefits were counted as income, the number of people eligible for certain programs could be sharply reduced.

A bill to raise the legal drinking age from 18 to 19 received final approval today from the State House of Representatives. The measure now goes to Gov. William A. O'Neill, who has promised to sign it. The 103-to-40 vote in the House came on the heels of its action earlier this month to raise the legal drinking age to 20. The Senate changed the age to 19.

The Nicaraguan Government today accepted as a basis for discussions the Reagan Administration's eight-point plan for improving relations between Washington and Managua, according to officials here and in the Nicaraguan capital. The United States presented its proposals to the Nicaraguans last week. A series of Nicaraguan counterproposals are due to be made public Thursday in Managua by the Nicaraguan Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Victor Hugo Tinoco. Envoy Presents Response Nicaragua's Ambassador, Jose Fiallos Navarro, met with Thomas O. Enders, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, at the State Department this afternoon to present his Government's formal response. His reply, according to the officials, reaffirmed Nicaragua's ''sincere disposition to begin serious negotiations'' with the United States but, at the same time, restated Managua's calls for an end to what it considers Washington's threats to its security.

Seven prisoners were killed here today when an early morning fire engulfed their cellblock on the eighth floor of the Hudson County Jail. Nine guards and six inmates were treated for smoke inhalation. There were no other injuries. The prisoners, who ranged in age from 19 to 45, were trapped in the dormitory-style cell when smoke from the intense fire, which apparently started in a foam-rubber mattress, drove back the guard who was assigned to patrol the top floor of the overcrowded eightstory jail.

GLASGOW LIKE many other cities that have lived through a long, sad slide from the eminence and prosperity they enjoyed during and after the Industrial Revolution, Glasgow has begun a counterattack. Known among Britons as a grimy, dilapidated, brawlingly proletarian sort of place, the city would like more people to pay attention to its increasingly flourishing civic and cultural life. There is no more potent symbol of artistic Glasgow than the works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a pioneer of the modern movement in architecture and design who was little honored in his time but is now internationally acclaimed. His native city is presently caught up in a flurry of activity designed to remind the world that it is here that almost all of his major works were executed.

International Britian bluntly warned Argentina not to test the naval blockade imposed within 200 miles of the Falkland Islands by London's nuclearpowered submarines. Amid cheers from all sides in Parliament, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said that ''if the zone is challenged, we shall then take the necessary action.'' She said Britain still sought ''a peaceful solution,'' but the Government took major steps to strengthen its naval and air forces. (Page A1, Column 6.) Alexander M. Haig Jr. described the Falklands crisis as ''extremely dangerous'' and urged Argentina and Britain to show flexibility. The Secretary of State said he would resume his weeklong mission to seek a peaceful settlement by flying to Buenos Aires today. (A1:4-5.)