During the initial introduction between Martin (Elijah Wood) and Mrs. Eagleton (Anna Massey), they speak about her replica of the German Enigma cipher machine. Mrs. Eagleton states everything was done manually to break the Enigma messages. Mrs. Eagleton states "there were no computers in those days (World War II)" and "calculations were done by hand." Actually, the British, working in Bletchley Park, did build a computer called Colossus by January 1944. Colossus was constructed with up to 2,400 vacuum tubes and programmers used approx. 1" wide paper tape to store programming. By the end of the war, Bletchley Park was using 10 Colossus computers to break various German cipher machines, including Enigma.