The Cyrillic I is a letter used in almost all Cyrillic alphabets with the exception of Belarusian.
И, from Alexandre Benois' 1904 азбука.
In early Russian typewriters like this one, there was no key for the digit 1, so the dotted І was used instead. Following the Russian alphabet reform of 1918, a 1 key was added.
The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an alphabetic writing system that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. It is used to write the Church Slavonic language, and was historically used for its ancestor, Old Church Slavonic. It was also used for other languages, but between the 18th and 20th centuries was mostly replaced by the modern Cyrillic script, which is used for some Slavic languages, and for East European and Asian languages that have experienced a great amount of Russian cultural influence.
View of the cave monastery near the village of Krepcha, Opaka Municipality in Bulgaria. Here is the oldest Cyrillic inscription dated of 921.
The Cyrillic alphabet on birch bark document № 591 from ancient Novgorod (Russia). Dated to 1025–1050 AD.
Codex Suprasliensis
Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander