The Inc. 100 Portfolio;

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* Six INC. 100 chief executive officers once worked for IBM Corp.

* Symbion Inc. (#43), which makes the Jarvik-7 artificial heart and other artificial organs, carries no product-liability insurance.

* One of Action Packets Inc.'s (#86) best-sellers is Freeze-Dried Astronaut Ice Cream.

* Robert Springer, founder of Western-World Television Inc. (#56), started his career as a scriptwriter at CBS for the "Perry Mason" TV series.

* The government of Israel provided some research and development capital for Fibronics International Inc. (#28), which set up a manufacturing plant there.

* Employees at Compression Labs Inc. (#62) receive an unusual employee benefit: one free hour with a lawyer each year.

* Ninety of the INC. 100 CEOs were born in the United States. The rest were born in Sweden (2), India, Israel, Wales, Canada, Poland, Argentina, and The Netherlands.

* And one was born in the Soviet Union.

* Biomet Inc. (#71) started in 1977 with a $500,000 loan from the Small Business Administration. Since then, in addition to paying installments on the loan, Biomet has paid about $6.5 million in federal income tax.

* Working in Fargo, N.D., Stanley E. Larson was the largest North American Steinway piano distributor before becoming CEO of High Plains Corp. (#61), an ethanol producer.

* INC. 100 companies have collaborative ventures with some of the largest firms in the United States, including Texaco, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Wang Laboratories, and Hercules Chemical.

* The vice-president of finance at Consul Restaurants Corp. (#87) is John Hamburger.

* The underwriter for SIS Corp. (#50), which develops restaurants for Wendy's, was McDonald & Co.

* Consolidated Stores Corp. (#84) helped liquidate the last cars produced by De Lorean Motor Co.

* Founders are still running 73 of the INC. 100 companies.

* Irwin Selinger, CEO of Patient Technology Inc. (#41), personally writes a letter to his 280 employees once a month.

* The perils of growth: Harvard Industries Inc. (#72) acquired small manufacturers that may be liable for toxic-waste cleanup in three states and Puerto Rico.

* Forty-three companies on the INC. 100 list have employee stock ownership plans.

* Allegheny & Western Energy Corp. (#34) grew overnight from $13 million in sales to $270 million with its buyout of a natural-gas company.

* Distribution of the television game shows "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy!" accounted for 82% of King World Productions Inc.'s (#64) sales in 1985.

* 1 Potato 2 Inc. (#12), a restaurant chain, is the fastest-growing small bankrupt company in the United States. It filed for protection under Chapter 11 on November 15, 1985.

* Five INC. 100 CEOs have founded other firms during their business careers.

* Helm Resources Inc. (#65), an energy and agriculture company, grew at a rate of 1,806% over the past five years. But it trimmed its payroll from 307 employees to just 214 over the same period.

* Eight states have never been home to an INC. 100 company since the first list was published in 1979: Arkansas, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Rhode Island.

* Only 1.5% of all long-distance telephone customers use Allnet Communication Services Inc., owned by ALC Communications Corp. (#3).

* The National Aeronautics and Space Administration used an Ashton-Tate (#4) program to manage information for the Voyager 2 mission to Uranus.

* Eighty-three companies on the list were founded in the last decade.

* The occupancy rate at hospitals run by American Healthcare Management Inc. (#69) was 34% in 1985, compared with 54% at investor-owned hospitals nationwide.

* Veterinarians across the country send animal electrocardiograms over the phone to Animed Inc.'s (#80) office in Roslyn, N.Y., where the firm makes diagnoses.