Esquire Magazine is celebrating its 75th anniversary in October and is adding an electronic 'paper' cover to that month's issue. The electronic cover will show scrolling words and images and is the first of its kind. Esquire will be putting 100,000 copies of its October issue into circulation.

In an interview with Folio, Esquire editor-in-chief David Granger said: "We decided to dedicate our 75th anniversary issue not to the magazine's past but to our culture's near future." Many publishers look to various forms of electronic paper to replace the wood pulp variety in the future —the idea is that electronic paper will be reusable, rather than the less-than-sustainable approaches to printing that many publishers take now.

E Ink, the company behind the electronic paper display technology used in both the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader, developed the cover for Esquire: "The cover is made up of microcapsules that are thinner than a human hair and are very small in diameter," according to E Ink's vice president of marketing, Sriram Peruvemba. "How it basically works is that the microcapsules contain black and white pigments. When a charge is added, depending on the polarity, the pigment particles rise to the top creating the image you see."

Esquire's October edition may be the first step to a paperless magazine industry.

Image — E Ink