Anthony Stark was born in Long Island, New York. He enters the undergraduate electrical engineering program at MIT while only 15 years old and graduates at the top of his class. At the age of 21, he inherits his father"s company, Stark Industries, after his parents are killed in a car accident. One of the first things Stark does is buy out the company that made the faulty brakes on his parents" car and correct the mechanical problem.
While on a visit to Vietnam (later updated to the Gulf War) to see how his new mini-transistors could assist the American war effort, Stark is caught in a booby trap. Captured by a Vietnamese warlord named Wong Chu, and dying from a piece of shrapnel lodged in his heart from the booby trap, Stark is pressed into building weapons for Wong Chu, along with a fellow prisoner, the famed physicist Yin Sen (later called Ho Yinsen). However, Stark and Yin Sen use the workshop to secretly design and construct a suit of powered armor — an iron exoskeleton that gives Stark tremendous strength as well as other abilities — that will not only keep Stark"s heart beating, but also allow him to escape.
