The physical changes the Reformers made were arguments in wood and cloth. A stone altar fixed against the east wall, with the priest standing before it and the people behind him, states that something is being offered on their behalf. A wooden table standing in the body of the church, with the minister behind it facing the congregation, states that a meal is being shared. Zurich made the change in 1525 and the rest of Protestant Europe followed at different speeds; in England the order to replace altars with tables came in 1550 and was reversed and restored more than once before it settled.
Several other features follow from the same decision. The cup is given to every communicant, reversing the medieval Western restriction of the wine to the clergy. The elements are received in the language of the people, from a minister the congregation can hear, and the account of the institution is read out from scripture rather than said quietly as a formula, because it functions as the warrant for the action rather than as the mechanism of it. Nothing is elevated for the people to adore, and nothing is kept afterwards; the bread and wine left over are ordinary bread and wine again, which is why these churches have no tabernacle, no monstrance and no rite of benediction.
What none of this settles is what the communicant receives, and the churches that share the furniture divide completely on that question. A Reformed congregation and a Baptist congregation may use the same table, the same words and the same trays, and hold quite different accounts of what happens at them.