In spite of its heritage, born amid the blood and chaos of the French Revolution, the metric system is eminently sensible, and science would be a muddle without it. But consider the loss to mankind had metrics been in effect in England at the time of Roger Bannister’s historic triumph, the first sub-four minute mile, now nearly 60 years past.  Actually, you can’t consider it—not literally—since England throughout its history has been nearly immune to the metric system.

Without the eccentric and absurdly anthropomorphic system of English measurement, with its hand spans, lord’s feet, and grains of wheat—not to mention England’s history of being conquered by nearly everyone—English history would have been very different. There would have been no mile, and so, in Bannister’s case, no “milestone.”

1760 yards, four laps, four minutes, one mile—the numbers themselves amount to poetry—and the glory of Bannister’s feat is in them as surely as an oak is in an acorn. The greatest single moment in sports history, the sports equivalent of “one small step,” and the greatest job of announcing also, as McWhirter, milks the moment, sorting the cosmos of records in Bannister’s wake. “A new meet . . . England all-comers . . . commonwealth . . . and world record . . . (long pause)  three . . .,” the final numbers lost amid the sudden thunder of  a thousand roaring throats.

My thirteen-year-old son, who had never heard of Bannister and knows little of distance running (except that he doesn’t like it), caught the story on ESPN just before he left for school yesterday. Ten hours later he could hardly wait to retell it, complete with crowd effects.

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History is the school subject he hates most, next to English, but as luck would have it, there was no one nearby to tell him that what had captured his imagination was history and language and mathematics, and so spoil the experience. The only poetry for boys his age is epic poetry, and if I had charge of their curriculum, it would be baseball and battles, and only when no one was noticing would I slip in the significance of something. Learning often requires that the learner be taken unaware. But that is another essay.

Nothing stands between us and oblivion but the telling and the retelling. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish to weigh any amount of “stone,” but this is one point where art and science may be incompatible--convert to metrics and a portion of history’s blackboard is erased. The stuff of legend requires a system of measurement based on man and not on the stars. Decimals may serve but they will not stir.