John Calvin Jureit, the inventor of the Gang-Nail connector plate, a simple-to-use connecting device for roof trusses that helped revolutionize the home-building industry in the 1950’s and make housing much more affordable, died Sept. 9 in Stuart, Fla. He was 87.

He died a day after suffering head injuries in a fall, said his wife, Marie.

The Gang-Nail plate is made of galvanized steel with nail-like prongs protruding from it. The plate is machine-pressed into two adjoining pieces of wood, usually in a roof truss, holding them together in somewhat the same way that the sharp metal clips fasten an Ace bandage.

Before the use of connecting plates, roofs were often constructed not with trusses but with individual rafters, a process that required highly skilled carpenters, precise cuts and a difficult procedure called toenailing, in which nails are driven into the lumber at a sharp angle.

A 1955 version of this connecting plate by Mr. Jureit (pronounced JOOR-ee-ut) was only one in a string of similar inventions serving the same purpose, but because his connector required no nailing, gluing or drilling at all, and because it came just as the roof-truss industry was booming, it had a major impact on home building.

“The whole notion about affordable housing and productivity increases came about because of his invention,” said John A. White, former dean of engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Because of Henry Ford, cars evolved from being crafted one at a time to assembly-line construction, which made the automobile affordable. Jureit has been widely recognized for doing this for housing.”

Mr. Jureit took a roundabout route to his eventual calling in the construction industry. After graduating from Miami Senior High School in 1935, he studied art, chemistry and accounting, then joined the Navy Seabees in 1942.

While stationed at Camp Perry in Virginia, he met Mildred Hildebrand, whom he would marry in 1946; she died 10 years ago. He is survived by his second wife, Dr. Marie Garritson Jureit, and their seven children: sons Glenn, Kenneth and Robert Jureit and Nile Garritson; and daughters Laura, Ashley and Lindsay Garritson.

The Navy sent him to Australia and New Guinea, where he saw no combat but did see a great deal of war-related construction. Upon his return to the United States, he enrolled at Georgia Tech on the G.I. Bill and started the engineering studies that would eventually lead to more than 60 construction-industry patents.

The company he started to market his most famous invention, Gang-Nails Inc., grew quickly and soon employed more than 1,000 workers, with sales worldwide. It went public in 1961 as Automated Building Components Inc., and is now owned by Warren Buffet under the name of MiTek.

Mr. Jureit had a lifelong interest in music. All seven of his children are musicians, and he was famous in South Florida for building his Coral Gables home around a large theater pipe organ of the type found in Radio City Music Hall. When he moved to Stuart 10 years ago, another pipe organ was installed in his home, and he and his family often presented concerts of classical music.

Mr. Jureit said he first imagined the Gang-Nail plate during a meditative moment in church, and named it during a quiet moment in the shower. He was modest about the brainstorm.

“You just scratch your head a little bit and think,” he said. “It’s not that hard.”