But his legacy will no doubt live on.

In 2015 the magazine made the bold move to remove the nudes, featuring tastefully clothed shots of beautiful women instead.

But earlier this year the clothes came back off, returning the publication to the form that made it famous.

Hefner’s magazine, first published in December 1953, was the most popular of its kind.

While it didn’t pioneer the genre, it did make magazines with nude women a more mainstream entertainment.

Long before Hefner and his magazine, men have enjoyed looking at nudes depicted in paintings, drawings and sculptures, many of which date back to prehistoric times when early man carved explicit images in rocks or daubed them on cave walls.

The Turin Erotic Papyrus, from about the 12th century BC in Egypt, is thought to be the oldest depiction of sex.

Over the centuries there was a secretive trade in hand-drawn or painted pictures, superseded by the sale of mass-produced printed pictures, with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century.

Even as late as the 18th century print shops shamelessly displayed their pornographic wares in their windows.

But the shopkeepers were targeted by moralists or obscenity laws, forcing the industry underground.

In about 1720, bookseller Edmund Curll was the first person charged under British obscenity laws for selling Venus in the Cloister, or The Nun in Her Smock.

He was given a sentence of an hour in the stocks.

In the 19th century the invention of photography gave purveyors of pornography a new way to capture nudity and sell it to eager men.

The innovation of half-tone printing in the 1880s, made it possible to mass produce printed photographs as postcards, which were sold under the counter at newsagents and tobacconists.

Many countries passed laws to curb the naked photo trade, with little effect. In the US, the Comstock law of 1873 tried to prohibit the trade of obscene material.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the French pioneered the production of magazines with women dressed provocatively or semi-nude.

Sometimes it was cloaked under the respectability of being a celebration of physical culture or as art, but some were a reflection of the burlesque shows popular in Paris, in which women appeared almost, but not quite, disrobed, concealing parts of their bodies with fans or pasties.

When soldiers from countries such as Australia and the US flooded into Europe during World War I, some saw their first naked postcards and magazines, and smuggled them home.

From the ’20s to the ’40s publishers tried to get away with increasingly provocative pictures of women in their magazines.

Painted images were easier to pass by the censor, but anything in photographic form had to conceal nipples and genitalia.

Some publishers operated secretly by producing magazines or books that looked innocent enough on the outside but contained explicit images inside, sold from bookshops hiding their illegal activities in the seedier parts of town.

In the mainstream, “pin-up” magazines such as American publication Esquire, which made its debut in 1933, featured sexy photographs of women that could be taken out and pinned on a wall.

Esquire, and other magazines like it, catered to male tastes by showing buxom women in skimpy shorts or skirts almost spilling from their tops.

Many pin-ups were Hollywood stars, such as Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth and Jane Russell, are credited with providing a morale boost for soldiers during WWII.

After the war Esquire continued to push the boundaries, but not enough for one copywriter named Hefner.

He decided in a new era of prosperity and sexual freedom that the public was ready for a new magazine like Esquire but with more sex.

He borrowed money from dozens of investors, including his mother, to start his own men’s mag.

Initially he was going to call it Stag Party but another publication named Stag threatened to sue, so he came up with Playboy.

The first edition hit the stands in 1953.

His great coup was to run naked pictures of Marilyn Monroe, taken before she became famous, guaranteeing a readership.

Despite its nude content the magazine was bought and sold openly, and made viewing naked women slightly more respectable or at least mainstream.

Imitators soon came along, some skirted the edges of good taste.

Among them was Penthouse, started by Bob Guccione in 1965 (although very tame in its first years).

Larry Flynt’s Hustler came along in 1974 and developed a reputation for more explicit content.