Hi all, I have a historical question about the relation between Bott-Samelson theorem and James construction

I know that the homotopy equivalence between loop-suspension space of X and the James construction of X can be deduced from Bott-Samelson theorem

However, I am just reading James's paper "Reduced Product Spaces" - and he is not citing Bott-Samelson, nor is he doing any reference on this theorem

He is showing that the homology of the James construction (of course he didn't call it that) is a free tensor algebra (under some assumptions) and that the relative homology of James construction and loop-suspension space are isomorphic, and "relative" means "relative to the base-space"

So how- and when - the connection between these two ideas were found?