[eru]

Well, even earlier private entrepreneurs were running the London Penny Post (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Penny_Post) before it got nationalized as a cash cow for the government (and divers other reasons).

[OJFord]

I meant that it was doing technologically advancing work around that time rather than that it was necessarily entrepreneurial.

I don't know if that was the case earlier, whether it involved itself with the R&D of better/faster road or railway carriages, for example.