What was going on when I was born?

Tuesday's election results are likely to produce important compromises in economic policy that in turn would result in more progress against inflation, political and economic analysts said today. The voters seemed to be challenging - and modestly undermining - supply-side orthodoxy, but at the same time no major officeholders identified with it were turned out. Neither could the returns be read as reflecting an eagerness to adopt expensive spending programs traditionally offered by liberals, analysts agreed. The analysts acknowledged that the Democrats' gain of 26 seats in the House of Representatives also raised the possibility of Congressional confrontation with the Administration. But to deal with such thorny problems as Social Security funding, military spending and the rising Federal budget deficit, they suggested, the more likely courses would be pragmatism and bipartisanship.

The 1982 Elections Democrats widened their majority in the House by 26 votes Tuesday in an election that raised doubts about President Reagan's ability to protect his conservative economic program from alteration by Congress. The Republicans retained firm control of the Senate, but White House strategists estimated that the election had cut about 24 conservatives from the bipartisan coalition that helped pass Mr. Reagan's key economic legislation. (Page A1, Column 6.) President Reagan was conciliatory about the sizable Republican losses in the House and predicted that both he and the Democrats would have to make ''concessions and compromises'' on major issues. (A1:5.)

How now, Dow Jones? The Dow Jones industrial average, which reached a new high of 1,065.49 yesterday in rising a record 43.41 points, is certainly the world's most widely watched market indicator. But behind the euphoria its performance brought to Wall Street and the celebration that erupted on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange when the market closed, there are nagging doubts about its value. When most people talk of changes in ''the market,'' there is little question that they are thinking about changes in the Dow Jones industrial average. Yet many executives in the financial community believe that this average, although it is the oldest continuous price index of the United States stock market, does not truly measure the market's depth, as do more broadly based indicators such as the Standard & Poor's index of 500 stocks and the New York Stock Exchange composite index.

Business executives said the election results may have reversed the conservative flow of the Administration's economic policies. Pragmatism and bipartisanship on economic matters in Congress seemed to be the most likely effect of Tuesday's balloting. Page D1. The Democrats expanded their majority in the House of Representatives by 26 votes Tuesday in an election that raised doubts about President Reagan's ability to protect his conservative economic program from alteration by Congress. But the Republicans retained firm control of the Senate, providing what White House spokesmen described as a United States and regional election tables, pages A20 and B9-10. foundation on which Mr. Reagan could build a new, more modest governing coalition.

FOR Eric Thompson, it is another weapon in the war against energy inefficiency in his creaking yellow Victorian house, which seems to gobble up oil on cold winter days. In the last five years, Commander Thompson, a physician in the United States Navy, has insulated his north-facing windows, installed two wood-burning stoves and tacked three solar panels onto the roof. Now he is spending $15,500 to erect a glass, wood and brick ''sun space'' on the south side of his 109-year-old home. ''This old house was loose as a goose in terms of heat loss,'' said Commander Thompson, who lives with his wife and two children in Noank, Conn. ''We hope this last purchase will save 20 to 25 percent on our heating bill. And we hope it will be a cheery place to sit on a sunny Sunday.'' Commmander Thompson's hopes are shared by many homeowners who are attracted by the possibility of reducing fuel bills while adding sunny living spaces. They are helping to make this a boom year for the businesses that sell sun spaces, also known as solar greenhouses - glassy additions that are being promoted as a way for homeowners to gain more room while saving energy.

Last June 7, as Olivia Bridges was leaving a check-cashing store on 96th Street at Second Avenue, she was surrounded on the street by five youths who demanded her money. When one of the youths warned the 49-year-old woman that he would cut her throat if she resisted, she turned over $234. A week later Mrs. Bridges was interviewed by detectives at the 23d Precinct station. She said she had been ''too nervous'' to get a close look at any of the youths and declined to view photographs of possible suspects. The case was closed. On Sept. 13, Mrs. Bridges went back to the store and cashed a check for $304. This time she tucked the money in her clothing. On her way home she was again stopped by a group of youths, at least one of whom carried a walkie-talkie perhaps to stay in touch with a lookout. Once more, she gave up the money. And, once more, she was unable to identify the muggers. Like the first holdup - and like the vast majority of other felony cases that occur each year in the Upper East Side-East Harlem precinct - the second case was closed ''with negative results.'' Detectives recorded in a pattern book the muggers' way of working in the case - the ''M.O.,'' or the modus operandi - and filed away the records in manila envelopes. Barring a confession later, the records will only gather dust.

Stock prices, buoyed by the election, soared to new highs. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 43.31 points, its biggest one-day advance on record, and closed at 1,065.49, its highest closing level in history. The Big Board's composite index and Standard & Poor's index also set records. Volume was 137 million shares in the fifthbusiest session ever. Analysts said Wall Street regarded the election outcome as a mandate to Washington to keep interest rates under control. (Page A1.) The Dow, though it is the world's most closely watched market indicator, has its critics on Wall Street. (D1.) Many businessmen and private economists viewed the election results as an opportunity for midcourse corrections in economic policy. Despite Democratic gains, however, they did not see a repudiation of President Reagan's program. (D1.) Analysts predicted key compromises in a spirit of pragmatism. (D1.) Voters approved most of the 178 bond issue proposals on ballots across the country. (D12.)

A Federal prosecutor asserted yesterday that Steven J. Ross, chairman of Warner Communications, had designated the company's assistant treasurer as the ''banker or overseer of a secret cash fund'' containing $170,000 obtained as bribes. The prosecutor, Nathaniel H. Akerman, made the accusation in an opening statement to jurors in the fraud and racketeering trial of Solomon Weiss, the assistant treasurer. The trial is being held in Federal District Court at Foley Square in Manhattan. Asked for comment on the prosecutor's accusation, Martin D. Payson, general counsel for the giant entertainment company, said Mr. Ross ''unequivocally denies any authorization or participation or knowledge of any secret cash fund.''

''We ordered champagne for our stock traders five minutes after the market closed and we're going for a vintage number.'' - John A. Conlon Jr. of E. F. Hutton & Company, celebrating the stock market's record performance. (A1:6.)

The developers of a merchandise mart - a key facet in the proposed $1 billion Times Square redevelopment plan - have been removed from the project because of their difficulties acquiring funds, the project's administrator said yesterday. The Los Angeles-based developers, David Morse and Richard Reinis, were notified of their removal on Tuesday, according to Philip Aarons, president of the Public Development Corporation, the New York City agency supervising the project, along with the state's Urban Development Corporation. Mr. Aarons said the developers had been asked to drop out after failing to meet a deadline in the payment of ''interim, preconstruction costs to the city, totaling between $40 and $50 million.''

WHEN Sir John Soane died in 1837 at the age of 83 he left behind him a museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields that is one of the unsung delights of London. One of his assistants called it ''a very odd shell - denoting the abode of a very odd fish.'' But the few people who frequent it would prefer to call it a tour de force of amenity and ingenuity. Not only is it a prodigy of architectural invention within a comparatively small space, it is a complete and genuine museum, an arsenal of ideas, that is to say, of which every single one has kept its powder dry. Soane's ideas have not gone out of style, either. On the contrary, his ability to range at will among the idioms of the past has suddenly come into high fashion. If there is such a thing as a postmodernist sensibility in architecture, Soane pioneered it. He had a dandy's appreciation of the past, and in his relation to it he was also one of the great impersonators. A compulsive tourist, he remembered all that he had seen on his travels; and he put it to use, every bit of it, with a rare nimbleness of wit.

Tuesday's elections carried more lessons than usual, perhaps because many of them seemed to contradict one another. Put most simply, the elections amounted to a solid Democratic success, but one that was not as broad as it could have been. For the Republicans, the losses were not vast, but they were most painful when measured against their early expectations of gains that never materialized. It might be easy to synthesize the electorate's conflicting impulses and see a fickle America that demands instant gratification and turns on less than totally successful Presidents. Instead, these contradictions should really be read together as a measure of the public's lack of conviction that any of the political alternatives offered it are really adequate. In a critical sense, Tuesday's messages can also be read as a reaffirmation of the real lesson of the 1980 elections, perhaps the most overinterpreted in American history. It was this: The electorate then was less committed to ideology than many of Ronald Reagan's partisans contended. It really wanted the economy straightened out. It still does.