This paper explores the implications of a Maxwell’s demon successfully applying a priori knowledge about the motion of particles to a thermodynamic system. The assumption that the knowledge can be recorded symbolically is used to calculate the number of bits required to represent the knowledge needed for placing particles of a gas into a maximum work configuratzon. The amount of work is divided by the number of knowledge encoding bits to derive the average work potential per bit. The quantum mechanics correspondence principle and a conservation of energy analysis are used to argue that each knowledge bit must represent a quantity of energy, and the sum total of the knowledge energy is the quantity of work done by the system.