[stevengoodwin]

OP here:

Primarily to read them offline. These messages were usually part of usenet, or in emails lists, or held on (remote) servces like Mono at Imperial. You could read them on the HP-UX systems, via a dumb terminal, which were connected to the Internet, but not connected to a PC with a disk drive. (Well, there were a few PCs and Mac classics around, but not enough for everyone and - as an Amiga fan - there wasn't yet CrossDos to let me use compatible disks.)

Some items, like early drafts of the Star Wars scripts, I did print for archival purposes as I (foolishly) thought that they'd be spotted and taken down by the copyright police, and lost forever!

Spoiler alert: This was all around 1991