The technology allowed us to do such things for a while, actually. The problem was cost. What finally brought these devices to the market are insane economies of scale driving prices into an acceptable range.

A lot of the technological breakthroughs we have are not only due to science and engineering, but also economy. Humans figured how to produce very complex stuff VERY efficiently, and this allowed us to move the latest developments from the lab to enterprise, and then to consumers.

SSDs and flash storage are brilliant, pretty much textbook examples of it. So are chips, LEDs, solar panels, and much more.