This company traces its origins to the Food Machinery Corp., a California maker of agricultural and industrial pumps that was itself a successor to the John Bean Spray Pump Co., founded in 1904. During World War II, the California-based company made landing craft for the American military. Its name became FMC in 1961, when it had over $400 million in annual sales and employed nearly 19,000 people nationwide. In 1972, soon after it purchased the Link-Belt Corp. of Chicago, FMC moved its headquarters from San Jose to the Windy City. As the owner of Link-Belt's old operations, FMC became a major local employer, with about 10,000 workers in the Chicago area during the mid-1970s. By this time, the company was already operating in several fields, including machinery and chemicals; annual sales stood at about $2 billion. By the late 1980s, FMC, which was now a leading producer of agricultural chemicals, was one of the nation's leading exporters; its Defense Systems unit, which produced the Bradley Fighting Vehicle for the U.S. Army accounted for nearly one-third of sales. In the 1990s, FMC shed its military contracting division to concentrate on chemicals and products and services for the oil and gas industries. At the end of the century, with annual sales of over $4 billion, FMC still called Chicago home, but only a few hundred of its some 16,000 employees worldwide were based in the area.

This entry is part of the Encyclopedia's Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses (1820-2000) that was prepared by Mark R. Wilson, with additional contributions from Stephen R. Porter and Janice L. Reiff.