What was going on when I was born?

A State Supreme Court justice ruled today that Governor Cuomo had exceeded his authority in ordering state employees to conduct voter registration drives in state office buildings. The justice, Harold J. Hughes of Albany, signed a preliminary injunction barring Mr. Cuomo from carrying out the plan, which was intended to register tens of thousands of voters before the November elections. Justice Hughes acted on a suit filed by the state Republican chairman, Justice Hughes said the State Legislature, not the Governor, had the authority to regulate the voter registration process and had actively excercised that authority over the years. He noted that a bill that would have set up a plan nearly identical to the one set up by Mr. Cuomo had been blocked in the Senate after it had passed the Assembly. The Assembly is controlled by the Democrats and the Senate by the Republicans. ''All citizens of the state suffer when one branch of government exceeds its authority at the expense of another,'' Justice Hughes wrote in a nine-page decision blocking the program as unconstitutional.

Behold a man out of control. His name is Francis Robert Schreiber, or Ady to his friends. On this particular afternoon, after a heavy rain, he is prowling a patch of grass and exercising his obsession. ''Oh, my God, look at the size of them,'' he says, his hand held to the side of his head. ''This is unheard of, unheard of. I have to come here tomorrow whether I want to or not. Oh boy, oh boy. I can't keep my eyes from hanging out. Edith, come here and look at this.''

Underground committees of the Solidarity movement, active in at least 20 of Poland's largest factories, have joined in a church-sponsored boycott of vodka in the hope of depriving the Government of its largest source of revenue, as well as saving the health of the Polish people. The Roman Catholic Church's sobriety campaign, which has been growing steadily over the last two years, reached a high point today, when priests in parishes all over the country led men and women in oaths pledging not to buy or drink vodka for a month. A welder close to some of the factory committees reported that he considered the two-week period a test run that he hoped would lead to longer boycotts. 'All Change Takes Time' ''You know, asking Poles to stop drinking is not so easy,'' the worker said. ''It is easier to get them out to throw stones. All change takes time.'' The man said that in addition to the appeals and church sermons, individual workers with what he called ''recognized authority'' would urge their co-workers to join the boycott.

With a gold medal on the line and the heavily favored Chinese closing in on them, the men of the United States Olympic team declined to play it safe in the finals of the team gymnastics competition Tuesday night: They went ahead and performed their riskiest routines. Their daring paid off when they captured their first gymnastics gold medal in history. ''Winning the gold was a miracle,'' said Scott Johnson, one of the six men on the team. ''It was a dream come true.'' Mitch Gaylord knew that the whole dream was resting in his muscular arms, that the gold medal the United States gymnasts were so close to winning could fall out of their hands if he fell off the high bar during the final event of the competition. And while doing his dangerous somersaulting stunt above that bar, he knew there was a good chance of falling off.

President Reagan's national security adviser said today that Moscow was misrepresenting Washington's position on proposed talks on space weapons and that ''it appears that the Soviets were not serious about their proposal.'' The security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, reading a statement to reporters in California, said the Russians were being ''disingenuous'' in portraying the American position. He said the American proposal that the talks consider offensive nuclear weapons as well as space arms was not a ''precondition,'' but a ''unilateral declaration'' of intent. A senior Administration official in California, when asked whether the conference, tentatively scheduled to open Sept. 18 in Vienna, was now dead, answered, ''We don't rule it out, but it is hard to be encouraged.'' He added that he was ''very much in doubt'' whether Moscow had ever been sincere about the talks.

Citing ''the unwarranted furor'' surrounding her appointment as chairman of an environmental advisory body, Anne McGill Burford today asked President Reagan to withdraw the appointment. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said in California, where the President is vacationing, that Mr. Reagan would ''abide by her wishes.'' Mrs. Burford, the former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, was to have been sworn in Thursday as chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere. Her decision came a day after the House of Representatives voted 363 to 51 to ask the President to withdraw her nomination. A majority of House Republicans, several of whom said her appointment was a political liability to the President and their party, joined Democrats to support the resolution.

If the Environmental Protection Agency prevails, leaded gasoline may soon go the way of rumble seats, running boards and fins. But at the Ethyl Corporation, the nation's leading producer of lead additives for gasoline, executives seem ready for that change. Citing danger to the public, the E.P.A. earlier this week announced a proposal to cut the lead in gasoline 91 percent by 1986. The agency said it was also considering a total ban in 1995.

The Navy announced today that the Grumman Corporation had won contracts potentially worth more than $1 billion to improve the A-6 and F-14 warplanes. The award insures the continuation of 6,800 jobs at Grumman into the 1990's, 90 percent of them at the company's Bethpage, L.I., plant, the company said. The new contracts shore up what had appeared to be an uncertain future for Grumman's aircraft manufacturing. The A-6 assembly line has been operating at a minimum annual rate and was headed for a shutdown after 1985. The F-14 program, while more robust financially, also faced declining production in the next several years as Grumman neared completion of the total planes ordered by the Navy.

Apple Computer Inc., like many other companies with active international operations, faced a problem recently. It agreed to make purchases from Japan, with payment due in yen several months later. The difficulty was that the value of the yen could - and did - swing sharply in those intervening months, altering Apple's dollar costs. Usually, to hedge such risks, companies agree to buy the yen, marks, pounds or other currency needed several months later at a fixed price in the forward market, paying in dollars. Apple, however, chose a new hedge, the currency option. Options are the right to buy or sell a set amount of a currency at a specified date. They eliminate the risk of a loss due to exchange movements, but unlike a forward contract, still give the holder a chance to come out ahead if the currency fluctuations are in its favor.

Moscow has been misrepresenting Washington's position on proposed talks on space weapons, according to Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan's national security adviser. It appears, he added in a statement, ''that the Soviets were not serious about their proposal.'' (Page A1, Col. 3.) The Kremlin has found no change in Washington's approach to proposed talks on space weapons, according to a high Soviet diplomat, Aleksandr A. Bessmertnykh. As a result, he said, the American position offers no chance for negotiations to start next month. (A4:3-6.)

THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 1984 Companies Grumman has won contracts worth $1.3 billion to improve the A-6 and F-14 warplanes for the Navy. The contracts will insure continued jobs for 6,800 employees, 90 percent of them working at the Bethpage, L.I., plant, and shore up a previously uncertain future for the company. (Page A1.) A Federal grand jury is investigating new information about General Dynamics, official sources said. The information relates to charges that the company submitted millions of dollars worth of fraudulent claims to the Navy. (D1.)

Three Ohio utilities, which last January halted construction of the Zimmer nuclear power plant and announced plans to convert it to coal use, said today that they would complete the conversion at a total cost of $3.4 billion. The top executives of the three owners of the Zimmer plant told a news conference that the converted plant should be operating in 1991 with a 1,300-megawatt coal-fired generating unit. That is a 62 1/2 percent increase in generating capacity from the 800- megawatt capacity the Zimmer nuclear reactor would have had, the utility executives said.