The Prisoner: Technology: The Saltzman Machine

After years of study of Yogis in India, neurologist Jacob Saltzman (sometimes spelled “Seltzman”) developed a machine which allows the transference of consciousness from one body to another. The Village wishes to use this process to create loyal spies out of captured spies from the other side. Unfortunately, the process is irreversible without Saltzman’s intervention, and the esteemed Professor is missing.

Number 6 was the only person who could hunt down Saltzman. Fortunately Number 6 has a strong sense of identity, so the Village wisely used the Saltzman machine to switch Number 6 into the body of a Colonel and set him loose to find a cure for himself. He acted exactly as predicted, and Professor Saltzman was retrieved and brought to the Village to demonstrate the reversal process.

Saltzman successfully returned Number 6’s consciousness to his own body, but having no experience with Saltzman, the Supercomputers failed to predict his behavior. He escaped in the young body of the Colonel and is still at large.

Although actual cloning procedure is completely secret, it is suspected that the Saltzman machine is used to transfer consciousness into clones.

Speculative scientific aspects of The Prisoner have come from a combination of the television episodes, related comics and novels, and unrelated scientific resources.

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