The General Electric CJ805 is a jet engine which was developed by General Electric Aircraft Engines in the late 1950s. It was a civilian version of the J79 and differed only in detail. It was developed in two versions. The basic CJ805-3 was a turbojet and powered the Convair 880 airliner, and the CJ805-23 (military designation TF35) a turbofan derivative which powered the Convair 990 Coronado variant of the 880.

Turbojet engines consist of a compressor at the front, a burner area, and then a turbine that powers the compressor. In order to reach worthwhile compression ratios, compressors consist of multiple "stages", each further compressing the air leaving the previous one.

One common problem with early jet engines was the phenomenon of "surging" or compressor stall. Stalls could occur when the approaching airflow was not in-line with the aircraft inlet to the compressor or when the throttle was advanced too quickly.

When engines had to be designed with pressure ratios greater than about 5, to meet demands for reduced fuel consumption, a new stalling phenomenon came to light, rotating stall. It occurred at low compressor speeds and caused blades in the first stage to break. This troublesome speed area is known as "off-design" and required the invention of special devices to make the compressor work. The compressor worked well near its maximum speed, known as "design", with a fixed area convergence from entry to exit to go with the design values of compression/density and with fixed blade angles set to give low pressure losses. At low speeds the much lower compression didn't squeeze the air enough to get through the now too-small exit. The velocity triangle combined the now too-slow entry air with the blade speed and gave a stalling angle.

One common solution used on early engines, and widely used today, was to give the air extra escape holes to speed up the entry air, i.e. the use of "bleed air" which is allowed to escape from openings near the middle of the compressor stages and vented overboard. The bleed valves close as the engine RPM increases towards operational speeds.

Another solution was the use of variable inlet vanes. The angle of incidence of the vanes at the front of the engine is changed to partially block the inlet area, which reduces the compression, and also angle the air onto the compressor blades to prevent stalling. This has the advantage of being more efficient than allowing valuable compressed air to escape, although fuel consumption at low speeds is relatively unimportant.

Further increases in pressure ratio, demanded by government procurement agencies and commercial airlines for long-range aircraft, caused a bigger mismatch of flow areas/density changes and blade angles. Two approaches were followed: slowing the blade speeds at the front of the compressor by splitting it into two separately rotating parts (spools) or making stators variable on the first few stages as well as the inlet vanes. A disadvantage is significant mechanical complexity as each stator blade has to be independently rotated to the desired angles. Two spools need more bearings and turned out to be heavier.

Bleed valves, two or three spools and variable stators are all used together on modern engines to cope with rotating stall during starts and at low speeds and to allow surge-free fast accelerations.