What was going on when I was born?

The I.B.M. in G.N.P. Can a single company alter the entire nation's economic picture? The International Business Machines Corporation comes close. In August, the company began shipping units of its model 200 I.B.M. 3090, a mainframe line popularly known as Sierra, and by year-end it may ship as many of 500 of them. With each costing up to $5 million apiece, the Sierras will not only pump up fourth-quarter figures for the depressed computer industry, they will also make a significant difference in the gross national product -especially now that the Commerce Department has given the computer industry more weight in the agency's new method of calculating G.N.P. The Sierra shipments will contribute at least one percentage point to G.N.P. growth for this quarter, says John D. Paulus, chief economist at Morgan Stanley & Company. Mr. Paulus predicts real annualized G.N.P. growth for the quarter of 2.3 percent - with a big chunk coming from the shipments. Sierra shipments in 1986, he says, will raise growth figures by a quarter of a percentage point for the year over all. That is a serious contribution ''in an economy that might grow by only 3 percent next year,'' he said.

DALLAS AMERICAN AIRLINES has for years talked about establishing a hub in Denver, a market dominated by its arch rival, United. The city, located at the edge of the central plains, is a natural gateway for routing business travelers to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and beyond, to Asia. Yet Robert L. Crandall, the shrewd and cocky chairman of American's parent, the AMR Corporation, balked recently at the prospect of buying a ready-made base in Denver. Despite a war chest of $1.3 billion in cash, he sat by as People Express bought Frontier Airlines, the largest Denver-based carrier, for nearly $300 million. Mr. Crandall has by no means lost interest in Denver. But, with American's two-tier wage contracts in place, with its cost per seat mile of capacity among the lowest of the major carriers, and with its cash flow high, the airline is increasingly finding it cheaper to move into new markets with its own planes and crews. American has already earmarked $6 billion over the next five years to add 160 planes to its current fleet of 290 - an expenditure that Mr. Crandall expects will turn out to be a prime cost-cutting move. ''It is that principle of low costs that drives us toward internal growth,'' he said.

The Government is now requiring officials assigned in this country from East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria to book their travel arrangements within the United States through the State Department. The new policy, which runs counter to previous efforts to keep travel as uninhibited as possible, will make it possible for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to keep track of the four nations' officials. The Government did not indicate that travel by the nationals of these four countries would be curtailed. But it has warned all the Eastern European allies of the Soviet Union that their diplomats' right to travel freely will be curbed if any of their nationals are found spying in areas that are closed to Soviet citizens, State Department officials said today.

Robert Graves, the English poet, novelist and classical scholar, died yesterday at his home in Deya, a fishing village on the island of Majorca. He was 90 years old and had been living in seclusion since failing health stayed his pen 10 years ago. Reports from Majorca said Mr. Graves died with his wife and other family members at his bedside. He had been bedridden for several months. Church bells on the island rang out with a traditional song of mourning at the news of his death. He became an honorary citizen of the village in 1968.

Most recent development in Secaucus, N.J., where 85 percent of the town lies within the Hackensack Meadowlands Development District, has been upscale office, retail and residential projects. Now nearing completion on County Avenue near Dorigo Lane, however, is a $5.2 million housing project for the elderly and handicapped.

Despite elaborate planning and a record-tying goal by Denis Potvin, the Islanders were beaten, 4-1, by the Quebec Nordiques tonight at Nassau Coliseum. There was a moment of elation when Potvin, who has labored since he was a teen-ager under the long shadow cast by Bobby Orr, slammed a blistering wrist shot into the net and tied Orr's 915-point National Hockey League record for defensemen. However, the thrill was short-lived, Potvin said after the game, because the rest of the evening produced nothing but frustration for his team. ''You want to let go emotionally and show how happy you are about accomplishing this,'' he said, ''but then you can't forget the overall feeling that we as a team are going through a hard period, and that causes disappointment. I was happy when I scored and relieved to get the pressure over with, but I wish the night had ended differently.''

The persistent power running of Napoleon McCallum and a defense that throttled the Cadets' wishbone offense brought Navy an upset victory over Army, 17-7, at Veterans Stadium today. McCallum, given another chance to play against Army after missing last year's game because of a broken leg, gained 219 yards rushing on 41 carries. Navy gained 322 yards rushing to Army's 198 - it was supposed to be the other way around. The Midshipmen scored touchdowns in the first and fourth periods plus a field goal near the end and their defense shut out Army after the first period. Their gem was a goal-line stand at the 2-yard line just before halftime.

In 1953, the Bulova Watch Corporation built an Art Deco-style headquarters building and assembly plant in Jackson Heights, Queens. But now that much of the company's product is made overseas, the need for its industrial space has been sharply reduced.

Tonight there was laughter and dancing at the Hotel Diplomate here in the green hills of this city. But at the hotel's gate, there were young men with automatic rifles, and in the distance the rumble of artillery could be heard. The signs of war are everywhere: at roadblocks manned by armed men in tattered khaki uniforms, in the antiaircraft guns aimed skyward from hilltops, in trucks loaded with soldiers hurtling through the capital over rutted streets on the way to the battlefront. After nearly two decades of political oppression, religious strife and untold atrocities and massacres, Uganda is locked in a war with itself. The Government, which is a coalition of ethnic and political groups largely from the north, is on one side. On the other is the National Resistance Army, which is made up predominantly of people from southern tribes who have been oppressed by successive Ugandan leaders.

The Army's Sergeant York antiaircraft gun was consigned to the Pentagon's junk heap in August, but Government investigators have continued to sift through lingering allegations that the $1.8 billion program was shot through with conflicts of interest and inflated costs. Last week the General Dynamics Corporation and four of its present or former executives were indicted on fraud charges stemming from the company's work on a prototype of the weapon. Among those charged was James M. Beggs, a former executive vice president and director of the company and for the last four years the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

IT is not easy to be a board member of a cooperative or condominium. At times, the pressures can become so intense that they bring on a severe case of burnout - no laughing matter, as anyone who has been through it will confirm. The symptoms are familiar - a sense of overwhelming fatigue, the distressing feeling that nobody appreciates the time and effort put into the task without pay and a fear that no other resident could do the job. Such feelings can make a board member irritable, less effective and downright resentful.

It is difficult to keep up with science in our kaleidoscopic times, but we must not give up trying. With that thought in mind, I wish to direct your attention to a study published in the December issue of Psychology Today that should give heart to all hard-working musicians, many of whom may not fully realize the awesome power they hold over all of us. A Stanford University pharmacologist, we are told, analyzed responses of more than 250 people and found that 96 percent experienced thrills in response to music ''far exceeding the rate for an expected thriller, sexual activity.'' The respondents told Avram Goldstein, the inquiring pharmacologist, that ''musical passages'' elicited greater thrills than the following, in descending order by percentage: Scene in a movie, play, ballet or book (92); great beauty in nature or art (87); physical contact with another person (78); climactic moment in opera (72); sexual activity (70); nostalgic moments (70); watching emotional interactions between people (67); viewing beautiful painting, photograph or sculpture (67) and moments of inspiration (65).