What was going on when I was born?

Ted Turner, who was reported late in February to be seeking a takeover of CBS Inc., is preparing for a move on the company, sources in the broadcast industry said last night. The Atlanta-based cable and broadcasting entrepreneur, who backed away from the early reports of his interest in CBS, has been in New York this week and in Washington in recent weeks trying to line up financing for a takeover bid, these sources said. According to the sources, Mr. Turner has secured financial commitments of some $50 million each from MCI Communications, a major long-distance telephone company, and from William E. Simon, the former Treasury Secretary. They also said that Shearson Lehman Brothers had debated whether to lead a hostile takeover bid for Mr. Turner but declined and that Mr. Turner was talking to other investment houses.

The A. H. Robins Company, a Richmond pharmaceutical concern, said yesterday that it had set aside $615 million to settle legal claims from thousands of women who used its Dalkon Shield birth control device. The reserve fund is by far the biggest provision of its kind in a product liability case, lawyers said. ''Clearly it is the biggest medical device product-reserve ever set up,'' said Dale Larson, a partner in the law firm of Robins, Zelle, Larson & Kaplan in Minneapolis, which specializes in product liability cases. ''It is also undoubtedly one of the largest product reserves set up in any category.''

The gloves came off on Capitol Hill today as the flinty chairman of the Unocal Corporation traded insults with T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman who says he might try to take over Unocal. While waiting to testify at a House hearing on corporate mergers, the two men did not even shake hands. ''I decided that he wasn't entitled to shake my hand,'' said the Unocal chairman, Fred L. Hartley. ''That's a strange way to treat your largest shareholder,'' Mr. Pickens answered.

HOWARD M. HALPERN, a Manhattan psychologist, left behind most of his parents' Jewish observances when he left home for college. By all odds, his daughter Sharon might have forsaken even the few to which he clung. But as a young girl she evinced a religious sensibility, and four years ago, in a telephone call from Israel, the depth of her feelings took him by surprise. At age 19, Sharon had strengthened her commitment to becoming Orthodox, to keeping the Sabbath and to following the dietary rituals of kashrut. To underscore that commitment, she wanted to continue her studies at a yeshiva in Israel. While Dr. Halpern believed that Orthodoxy might meet Sharon's needs for an ethical life and a sense of purpose, he said in a recent interview that he felt it might be ''a narrowing experience'' that would limit her ability to think for herself. He worried, too, that his relationship with his daughter would be affected by his being less observant than she.

Under heavy pressure from constituents, the House of Representatives voted today to repeal the new law and regulations that require people who drive company cars or use their own cars on business to keep detailed records for tax purposes. The vote was 412 to 1. The Senate Finance Committee unanimously approved a similar bill today, and the Senate is expected to pass it this week.

The Senate Finance Committee today approved tough trade reprisals against Japan. The Administration opposes the bill but may use it to demand further entry for American-made goods into the Japanese market. The bill, passed by a 12-to-4 vote, would give the President 90 days to obtain increased access for United States products in Japan or to take action under this nation's ''unfair trade'' law to ban imports from Japan. (The Japanese Foreign Ministry issued a statement early Wednesday strongly condemning the committee's action, The Associated Press reported from Tokyo.)

Chemical Bank has emerged as the most likely purchaser of the failed Home State Savings Bank of Cincinnati, but despite an announcement by Gov. Richard F. Celeste of Ohio that a buyer had been found, the New York bank issued a statement saying there was no agreement. Mr. Celeste has been under intense political pressure to find a way to protect Home State's 92,000 depositors, who had almost $700 million in the thrift institution. Home State's failure more than wiped out the reserves of its insurer, the Ohio Deposit Guarantee Fund. That fund was not federally insured.

The Defense Department today made public a new assessment of Soviet military power, charting what the Pentagon called continuing, rapid progress in weapons technology. It said progress was especially marked in submarines, nuclear missiles and space weaponry. The report spoke of an expanding Soviet program in laser weapon research, which it said was part of a drive for superiority in space weapons that demonstrated the need for President Reagan's own space-based missile defense program. Laser Weapons Are Described The Russians were reported to have built prototype ground-based laser weapons deemed capable of interfering with American satellites and of being deployed by the late 1980's.

The Navy today selected a Maine shipyard to build a new class of destroyers, passing over two major rivals for the service's biggest shipbuilding program for the rest of the century. Bath Iron Works, in Bath, Me., a subsidiary of the Congoleum Corporation, was awarded a $321.9 million contract to build the first destroyer of the Arleigh Burke class, designated DDG-51. Armed with the latest weaponry against planes, missiles, submarines and surface ships, the vessel is designed to protect aircraft carriers and participate in other large naval operations. The destroyer class is named for Rear Adm. Arleigh A. Burke, who was Chief of Naval Operations from 1955 to 1961, when he retired.

In this morning's cold aftermath, with 20,000 beer cans littering the Villanova University campus according to some blearily informed estimates, people began drifting to commuter railroad stations along the Main Line, of which Villanova is the central point. College men and women with blue cat's paws, symbols of the Villanova Wildcats, painted on their faces like beauty marks. Prim, trim suburban mothers with toddlers in tow. Old people, middle-aged people, young people. They came at first in dribs, drabs and small groups, but by late morning had become a steady stream, filling the trains, one of a number of similar streams converging from throughout the lower Delaware Valley on what Philadelphians call Center City.

At first glance, the Charles Krug Winery might pass for a small refinery. Gleaming stainless-steel towers pierce the sky. Pipes run hither and yon. Wires and a thin optical fiber relay data from the tanks to a central computer, which each morning prints out graphs showing the temperature changes in each tank. This is high technology, Napa Valley style. Slowly, wine making is turning from an ancient art into a modern science. Computers, sophisticated laboratory instruments and assembly-line automation are making their way into wineries that once operated with wooden tanks and human toil. Wine makers say modern technology can result in more consistently good wine through better control of the production process. Computers and chemical analysis can also provide more information about what goes into a good wine, leading to improvements later on. ''It's leading to better judgment and better wines down the run,'' said Dr. Roger B. Boulton, associate professor of enology, the science of wine making, at the University of California at Davis.

When Joan Hardiman's boys were small and she wanted them to eat something good for them - fresh fruit, perhaps - she would climb to the second floor of her two-family house and stash it in her mother's refrigerator, the one that Patrick, Tommy, Michael and Kevin regularly raided. ''They never came into the house without first running upstairs,'' said Mrs. Hardiman, a Richmond Hill resident for 32 years, ever since she and her husband, Pat, bought an attached house within sight of the elevated train and moved three generations of their family from the blight of the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. ''When they didn't make points with me, they ran up to Mom,'' said Mrs. Hardiman, a buxom 55-year- old with a peaches-and-cream complexion reminiscent of her mother, who died three years ago at the age of 79. ''And if there was a dispute over the TV, the ones who caught the losing end came upstairs and Mom let them watch whatever they wanted.'' At a time when urban families are scattering, with grandparents growing old alone and untended, and children chasing distant dreams, this central Queens community is a haven of multigenerational living. Throughout Richmond Hill - but particularly in the area south of Jamaica Avenue that is chockablock with tidy row houses - grandparents, parents and children thrive under one roof.