In the 1990's I serviced computer printers and monitors. Juki made a daisy wheel printer called the 6100. It was unique in that it used mag-lev to suspend the print head.
It came to mind regarding this story because someone had written software to convert the Juki 6100 to a graphics printer, using the Period Key Only. It printed at 18 characters per second, try to imagine how slow that is.