During World War I it supplied a major 100 hp-class rotary engine that was used in a number of early-war fighter aircraft designs.
[1] The company had its origins in 1891, when Willy Seck invented a new gasoline fuel injection system and produced a small one-cylinder stationary engine of about 4 hp, which he called the Gnom.
[1] The engine was improved to achieve more power, but in 1897 the shareholders refused to allow Seck to develop a Gnom-powered car and he left the company.
In 1913 Motorenfabrik Oberursel took out a license on the French Gnome engine design and the similar Le Rhône 9C.
The Gnome Lambda seven-cylinder 80 hp rotary engine was also produced by the Oberursel firm as the Oberursel U.0 Umlaufmotor (the generic German term for a rotary engine) as their first-ever powerplant for German military aircraft, and was used on the initial versions of the famous Fokker Eindecker fighter, the Fokker E.I.
The 110 hp Oberursel UR.II, the licensed copy of the Le Rhône 9J of the same power output, was the next major success.
This acquisition proved advantageous because Fokker was partial to rotary powered designs, and because supplies of the Mercedes D.III engine were limited.
The firm was also responsible for manufacturing the largest number (at some 12,500 units) of the German Wehrmacht military's Raupenschlepper Ost fully tracked artillery tractor design.
The new owners decided to use the Oberursel plants to produce an entirely modern engine for the "small end" of the aviation market, and started development of the Rolls-Royce BR700 family in 1991.