improvement of a translation piece

The following is a translation piece from Chinese to English. Could anyone help me by correcting the mistakes in it or give me some suggestions for improvement. Thanks a million!

Movable type printing press technology is universally acknowledged as one of the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China. And its inventor BiSheng, a commoner during the reign of Chingli (1041-1048), used sticky clay to cut in it characters. Each character formed a single type. He baked them in the fire to make them hard. Then he arranged these characters in an iron plate, fixing them with a mixture of pine resin, wax and paper ashes. He placed the plate near the fire to make it one solid block. Thousands of books could be printed in this way. The movable type is more economical and convenient than the Woodblock printing, for the type founts could be used repeatedly. Its working principle is approximately the same as the modern type printing using pieces of lead.

The ceramic movable type system by BiSheng is not only an innovation in the history of Chinese printing technology, but also a piece of pioneering work in the development of printing cause. The technology exerts profound influence on development in culture, communication among countries and transmission of human civilization. It was introduced in succession to adjacent countries of Korea, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, even reaching Iran in Western Asia. Its influence extended as far as Egypt in Africa, Europe, America, Australia and the entire world. This demonstrates the tremendous contribution Chinese people made to the world civilization. Karl Marx commented that"Gunpowder, the compass and the printing press were the three great inventions which ushered in bourgeois society. Gunpowder blew up the knightly class; the compass discovered the world market and founded the colonies; and the printing press was the instrument of Protestantism and the regeneration of science in general; the most powerful lever for creating the intellectual prerequisites."