Iron Man's Arc Reactor was originally envisioned by his father Howard Stark as a way to end the Cold War. Tony Stark is undeniably the greatest genius in the MCU to date, a fact confirmed by his successfully constructing the first Iron Man armor in a cave from a box of scraps. For all that's the case, though, in truth he's always stood upon his father's shoulders. This is particularly the case with the Arc Reactor.
Howard Stark constructed the first prototype Arc Reactor to power Stark Industries Headquarters in Los Angeles, but he considered it unfinished technology. It took the genius of his son Tony to figure out how to miniature it, but even Tony hit upon a snag when he realized a key chemical component was poisoning him. Fortunately Howard had believed an undiscovered element was the key to making a sustainable Arc Reactor, and he'd left behind guidance that helped his son use modern technology to synthesize that element. But why did Howard work so hard on the Arc Reactor?
According to the Iron Man 2: Public Identity tie-in comic, the Arc Reactor was Howard Stark's attempt to work to end the Cold War. He seems to have been opposed to the burgeoning nuclear industry, wary of nuclear power and fearful the Cold War would heat up in the most explosive way possible. Thus Howard began working on an alternative power source, one that would be both renewable and sustainable. What's more, because he intended this to benefit the whole world rather than just a single nation, he recruited scientists from all over the planet in what he referred to as "Project Unity." Anton Vanko was a member of Howard Stark's research team - and he became its downfall.
Of course, the Unity Project was a failure. Howard Stark had failed to factor in human failings, and Anton Vanko was a greedy man who saw an opportunity to make money and seems to have sold the plans on. Howard uncovered the truth, and had Vanko deported back to Russia. Sadly, this appears to have been the end of Project Unity, and understandably so; the US Government would naturally be concerned other Stark secrets were in danger of falling into the wrong hands. The potential of the Arc Reactor was wasted for generations, while Howard Stark became focused on his work with SHIELD, who became a lot more active in the Cold War over the decades.
Until the days of Tony Stark, the man who miniaturized the Arc Reactor and boasted he had "successfully privatized world peace." While Tony no doubt used the Arc Reactor in a very different way to anything his father had envisaged, that technology really did become the key to saving the world - and was even used to save New York from a nuclear bomb in The Avengers.
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