watch this -- you're gonna flip out--this is one flippin' dot from a flip-dot display, flipping.
each dot has two coils wired in series around a U-shaped iron armature. pass current one direction, and you get a N-S magnet. other way, and you get S-N. the dot is a tiny magnet, so it flips whichever way the armature is magnetized, and stays! it's a magnetic flip-dot flip flop! 
each dot also has two current-steering diodes. there is a single wire for each column, and two wires for each row.
to turn a dot ON, you ground one of the row wires and connect the column to power. to turn the dot OFF, you connect power to the other row wire and ground the column line. it takes about 150mA to magnetize the armature.
i haven't figured out a good driving circuit yet, so i'll leave you with this little guy that i made by manually passing current through each dot.
how about a little slow motion? max drive frequency seems to be around 8Hz.
full speed, 8Hz.
