Emperor Claudius applied his scholarly interests to reforming the Latin alphabet. He introduced three new letters, known as the “Claudian letter” whose purpose was to represent sounds in the Latin alphabet which did not have a specific letter of their own. The anisigma, like a backwards C, replaced BS and PS. The digamma, Ⅎ, a turned F denoted the consonant v. (The v we use today, then denoted the vowel u.) The sonus medius, Ⱶ, marked the sound which fell between a u and an i before a labial consonant. For instance, maximus would now be written maxⱵmus. Following Cladius’ death, however, his carefully thought-out reforms fell into disuse. Even though they were entirely non-political.
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/147855430492
