History of San Jose, California many orchards in the Santa Clara Valley, which emitted a delightful smell of ripening fruit, that a common nickname for the Santa Clara Valley was "The Valley of Heart's Delight". Food Machinery Corporation (FMC) was founded in nearby Los Gatos as the "Bean Spray Pump Company" in 1884 and moved to San Jose in 1903. In 1941 the company received an order from the United States War Department for one thousand LVTs, bringing defense contracts to San Jose for the first time. After World War II, FMC continued as a defense contractor, with the San Jose facilities designing and manufacturing
San Jose, California expanse of the South Bay; and the rural Coyote Valley, to the city's extreme southern fringe. San Jose, like most of the Bay Area, has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen "Csb"). San Jose has an average of 301 days of sunshine and an annual mean temperature of . It lies inland, surrounded on three sides by mountains, and does not front the Pacific Ocean like San Francisco. As a result, the city is somewhat more sheltered from rain, giving it a semiarid feel with a mean annual rainfall of , compared to some other parts of the Bay Area, which can