Why use backticks?

[Iwan van der Kleyn]

I was showing a friend around Python using the Shell. He asked for a few 
Python equivalents of common Perl and VB constructs. The use of 
backticks come up. After showing the use of os.popen I demonstrated

  out = `ls`

but to my surprise it didn't generate the expected SyntaxError but 
rather a NameError. So after some Googling I found that backticks around 
an expression ( `expression`) are equivalent to calling 
repr(expression). Every day a learning moment.

But why this rather obscure use of backticks? Is there any use for them 
except making code harder to read ? :-)

Regards,

Iwan