 Much of the equipment used by the Workshop in the earlier years of its operation in the late 1950s was semi-professional and was passed down from other departments, though two giant professional tape-recorders made an early centrepiece.Reverberation was obtained using an echo chamber, a basement room with bare painted walls empty except for loudspeakers and microphones.Due to the considerable technical challenges faced by the Workshop and BBC traditions, staff initially worked in pairs with one person assigned to the technical aspects of the work and the other to the artistic direction.