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Anthon Stark was born in Long Island, New York, to Howard Stark and Maria Collins Carbonell Stark. In his youth, Tony Stark was a precociously intelligent young boy. By the age of 15 Tony had enrolled in MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated at the age of 19, and at the top of his class.
After his parents were tragically killed in a car accident, Tony inherited Stark Industries, an unparalleled mega-corporation, at the age of 21. One of his first projects as the new CEO was to have the faulty break system, which was inside his parents' car and even led to their accident, redesigned in order to prevent further incidents and to save lives.
Iron Man in his First Armor During the Vietnam War (later retconned as the Gulf War, then later still as the war in Afghanistan), Stark was at one of his munitions plants testing new technology for the military when he was injured by an explosion that lodged shrapnel near his heart. Tony was then captured by a local warlord and forced under threat of death to create a doomsday weapon for him with another captive, the famed Nobel award-winning physicist, Yin Sen. The shrapnel was working its way towards Stark's heart and slowly killing him, but he and the physicist created an iron suit in secret that would save Tony's life. The suit contained and iron chest plate with magnetic fields that halted the shrapnel in its place. Yin Sen then created a diversion, sacrificing himself so that Stark could put on the power armor in time and escape captivity. In the suit, Stark took on the warlord and his men and avenged Yin Sen's death, thus Iron Man was born.
After fleeing from enemy territory Tony met and befriended the pilot James Rhodes who had been shot down in his helicopter by the enemy. Upon arriving back in the United States, Tony decided to continue being Iron Man in order to fight injustice. He believed that he had a limited amount of time left to live due to his injury, and therefore wanted to make the most of it. Therefore, he began making vast improvements on the technology of his power armor.
Tony Stark's original armor was built in captivity, and was necessarily low-tech. The bulky grey suit was designed around an iron chestplate that magnetically held a piece of shrapnel lodged near his heart from piercing any further and killing him. That injury being the result of an ambush that lead to Stark's capture. Tony had been ordered by the enemy to build a devastating weapon for them, but instead built the suit of armor to facilitate his own escape. The armor proved completely impervious to small arms fire, and allowed Stark to over power his gaurds.
The armor was powered by miniature transisters of Stark's own design. Its earliet weapons were gauntlet mounted flame-throwers. Once Stark returned to the US and his lab he began to add many other features. These included air pressure jets for extended jumps, a chest-mounted proton beam generator, a miniature hacksaw that extended from the gauntlet's fingertips, and magnetic turbo-insulators that allowed him to magnetically deflect metal projectiles or to bring metallic objects to him. The suit also consisted of a short-wave radio for communication and for recieving external information from a variety of sources.
When Stark first used the power armor in the US he found that its appearance was incredibly frieghtening to the general public. In order to engender trust he altered the suits appearance by painting it a more friendly gold color
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