While going though the scrap bin at my local maker space, I ran across this printer with the cover missing. It appently is a "Mite 123P" judging by the dates on the components it was made in 1978. I can not find any real info on it, but the mechanism seems to be full of vodo. So I did a small teardown with some pictures. It appears that it uses a motor to move the carriage, but then it uses a bank of solenoids to move it into the correct character selection. Here is the link to the all the pictures I have
http://imgur.com/a/GTtFm . Also a very short youtube video of the solenoids in action
https://youtu.be/NRILgm6PbLQ . If anyone has any input or info please let me know
I believe that these were used (at least for one use) on SAC 'Looking Glass' KC-135 missions. It's basically a teletype but much more weight and volume efficient as airborne service prefer. I was in the USAF in the late sixties performing teletype/crypto maintenance but this unit was not part of tech school so no first hand knowledge other then hearsay. Your unit looks newer then what was flying in the 66-70 time frame because of the ICs.