early typewriters had no 0 or 1, you were expected to use I or O. So at least there they were the same letter.
There was a great article posted here not too long ago about the actual origin of the qwerty keyboard, spoiler, it was not actually designed to slow typing down. Anyway a fun fact found in that article was why "I" is where it is. An early adopter of the typewriter was a telegraph transcription company. and they wanted "I" moved near the end of the numbers so using it as a "1" they could type the 18 in 1875 quicker.
