Truman announces U S has developed hydrogen bomb January 07 1953 This Day in History In his final State of the Union address before Congress, President Harry S. Truman tells the world that that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. It was just three years earlier on January 31, 1950, that Truman publicly announced that had directed the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb. Truman’s directive came in responds to evidence of an atomic explosion occurring within USSR in 1949.