It is the norm in the fictional world of Harry Potter: the magical daily newspaper where words and pictures come to life in the reader’s hands.

Now a revolutionary technology means that the moving imagery in The Daily Prophet is set to become a reality. A Cambridge-based company is months away from launching the world’s first flexible electronic screen.

Designed by scientists at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, to compete with the growing variety of electronic books from the likes of Sony and the US-only Amazon Kindle, the roll up A4-sized “intelligent plastic” display has taken a decade of development and cost £120 million. It is the first screen to be made from a microchip not of silicon but of cheap plastic.

However, Plastic Logic, the company behind the device, says that it dares not produce a roll-up screen yet because research showed that consumers don’t want flexibility. Martin Jackson, the vice-president of technology, said: “People worry that it will break if they roll up a device and dump it in their bag.”

The touch-screen reader needs to be charged just once a fortnight and the screen uses no power when the image isn’t changing.

E-versions of newspapers are expected to be a popular use of the new technology because news can be downloaded at any time in return for a subscription equivalent to the price of buying printed copies in a newsagent.

Many titles are already published on the conventional Amazon Kindle in the US, including The Times, at prices from $6 (£3.50) to $15 a month, although Amazon has not yet announced plans to bring the device to Europe.

The Plastic Logic will be launched in the US at the beginning of next year at a similar price to the Kindle, which starts at $299. A British launch is set to follow in late 2010 or early 2011.

John Ridding, the chief executive of the Financial Times, which is also working with Plastic Logic, said: “We’re already beginning to see robust demand for newspapers on the Kindle, and before long we’ll see newspapers on a whole spectrum of devices as well as print. The advantage of this new device is that it won’t break when I drop it, but getting advertisers involved will be key, and they want to see a colour version.”

All electronic readers are, for the moment, black and white and text only, because they do not use a backlit display to ensure comfortable reading over long periods. That may prevent an immediate launch of moving images used on The Daily Prophet, a limitation similar to that faced by the first iPods when they were launched at the beginning of the decade. Mr Jackson predicted that “colour is a year or two off, and video will be a few years while later” as the technology develops.

By then, readers may be rolling up their plastic computers, too.

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